Russia's Sandworm Hackers Attempted a Third Blackout In Ukraine (wired.com) 40
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: More than half a decade has passed since the notorious Russian hackers known as Sandworm targeted an electrical transmission station north of Kyiv a week before Christmas in 2016, using a unique, automated piece of code to interact directly with the station's circuit breakers and turn off the lights to a fraction of Ukraine's capital. That unprecedented specimen of industrial control system malware has never been seen again -- until now: In the midst of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine, Sandworm appears to be pulling out its old tricks.
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) and the Slovakian cybersecurity firm ESET issued advisories that the Sandworm hacker group, confirmed to be Unit 74455 of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency, had targeted high-voltage electrical substations in Ukraine using a variation on a piece of malware known as Industroyer or Crash Override. The new malware, dubbed Industroyer2, can interact directly with equipment in electrical utilities to send commands to substation devices that control the flow of power, just like that earlier sample. It signals that Russia's most aggressive cyberattack team attempted a third blackout in Ukraine, years after its historic cyberattacks on the Ukrainian power grid in 2015 and 2016, still the only confirmed blackouts known to have been caused by hackers.
ESET and CERT-UA say the malware was planted on target systems within a regional Ukrainian energy firm on Friday. CERT-UA says that the attack was successfully detected in progress and stopped before any actual blackout could be triggered. But an earlier, private advisory from CERT-UA last week, first reported by MIT Technology Review today, stated that power had been temporarily switched off to nine electrical substations. Both CERT-UA and ESET declined to name the affected utility. But more than 2 million people live in the area it serves, according to Farid Safarov, Ukraine's deputy minister of energy. [...] The revelation of Sandworm's attempted blackout attack provides more evidence that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by a new wave of cyberattacks on the country's networks and critical infrastructure, though with only mixed success.
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) and the Slovakian cybersecurity firm ESET issued advisories that the Sandworm hacker group, confirmed to be Unit 74455 of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency, had targeted high-voltage electrical substations in Ukraine using a variation on a piece of malware known as Industroyer or Crash Override. The new malware, dubbed Industroyer2, can interact directly with equipment in electrical utilities to send commands to substation devices that control the flow of power, just like that earlier sample. It signals that Russia's most aggressive cyberattack team attempted a third blackout in Ukraine, years after its historic cyberattacks on the Ukrainian power grid in 2015 and 2016, still the only confirmed blackouts known to have been caused by hackers.
ESET and CERT-UA say the malware was planted on target systems within a regional Ukrainian energy firm on Friday. CERT-UA says that the attack was successfully detected in progress and stopped before any actual blackout could be triggered. But an earlier, private advisory from CERT-UA last week, first reported by MIT Technology Review today, stated that power had been temporarily switched off to nine electrical substations. Both CERT-UA and ESET declined to name the affected utility. But more than 2 million people live in the area it serves, according to Farid Safarov, Ukraine's deputy minister of energy. [...] The revelation of Sandworm's attempted blackout attack provides more evidence that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by a new wave of cyberattacks on the country's networks and critical infrastructure, though with only mixed success.
try again numbnuts (Score:1)
when the sun isn't shining
The water is falling. The wind is blowing. The waves are crashing. The geothermal vents are still steaming.
Re:try again numbnuts (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't Europe building their own sun anyway?
Re: (Score:1)
It's not just a question of drilling, the gas / oil resources of Europe are quite limited. Yes, fracking can increase the amount that can be extracted, but it is hardly enough to satisfy the European energy market. I do agree though, Europe should start exploring what local resources can be extracted. While continuing investing in nuclear and renewables.
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Do you think Russia would have all this money to burn on waging war in Ukraine if Europe would stop being woke and drill for oil themselves instead of relying on Russian oil?
Apparently it's not well known (among slashdotters) that you can't just drill for oil wherever you find it convenient. If you want your drilling to actually produce oil, you have to drill where the oil is.
If there's no oil (or natural gas) deposits under Munich, Europe can drill there as much as you want them to, it won't increase the amount of production.
Natural gas is sourced from Russia because that's where the resource is located.
Re:Europe needs to drill their own oil... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ukraine has large, untapped natural gas reserves, the second largest in Europe after Norway. One of the reasons Russia invaded Ukraine is believed to be securing that resource for Russia and preventing the emergence of a competitor, potentially one which might join the EU.
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Well it's shale gas that needs fracking but yes, it would be a huge threat to Russia's economy if Ukraine started producing large quantities of natural gas and we didn't have to buy from Russia. It's certainly a reason for the invasion. The other would be that Ukraine blocked the canal providing most of the water to Crimea and they are desperate to get it open again as otherwise Crimea is a worthless peninsula. I guess there is a naval base at Sevastopol, but it would have been a lot cheaper to simply build
Ukraine Reserves [Re:Europe needs to drill thei... (Score:2)
Ukraine has large, untapped natural gas reserves, the second largest in Europe after Norway. One of the reasons Russia invaded Ukraine is believed to be securing that resource for Russia and preventing the emergence of a competitor, potentially one which might join the EU.
Indeed. Right at this moment, I think "Europe should drill for gas in North-eastern Ukraine to reduce their dependence on Russian gas!" is not a very useable suggestion.
One of the reasons Russia invaded Ukraine is believed to be securing that resource for Russia and preventing the emergence of a competitor, potentially one which might join the EU.
Yep. Their changing their objective to eastern Ukraine happens to cover about 50% of the Ukraine natural gas fields. (and Russia's taking Crimea already removed access to a large fraction of the offshore reserves).
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That certainly worked out well for Russia... Ukraine: EU chief offers Kyiv fast track to membership [dw.com]
I guess that's not as bad as "Plan B" (Score:3)
Bomber groups instead of hacker groups. But any kind of escalation, expansion of operations, is cause for concern.
Those of us that get to live lives infinitely less strife-full feel tormented by mere spot shortages of goods, and disruptions of our internet connections. Even getting just brushed by a war, and not actually maimed or killed by it, is so much worse that few of us can easily remember having a hardship deserving of mention in the same breath.
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It's not an invasion, Putin is helping people and no one has died [youtube.com].
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NATO ended the war in Kosovo. The people there are at peace to this day.
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The ends justifies the means, so of course we can forgive unilateral military action taken by an alliance unrelated to the nations involved around Kosovo and without UN authorization. Because it all worked out in the end. And when it doesn't work out, we simply have to rewrite the narrative.
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ok, now support your position. You say Ukraine is not as sick as what NATO did. But Ukraine is without UN authorization, too. What did NATO do that was so much more "sick" (your word) than what Russia is doing to Ukraine?
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Because he doesn't believe it. Putin is his saint, and his soldiers can do no wrong. He doesn't think it's anything more than any other military action, failing to see the utter horror Putin is causing. Only a fool thinks those two military "actions" are the same.
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My position? I just think it's pretty slick that NATO has better PR and can spin an illegal invasion how they please. While Putin can't manage to do the same. He has tried within the media he has control of in Russia, but the Western media is much larger thing and far outside of his influence.
The US's Operation Iraqi Freedom had the same problems of being spun as a benefit for the Iraqi people. While at the same time it's not something the people asked for or that the UN authorized. Saddam was a bad man, bu
Re: (Score:1)
My position? I just think it's pretty slick that NATO has better PR and can spin an illegal invasion how they please. While Putin can't manage to do the same. He has tried within the media he has control of in Russia, but the Western media is much larger thing and far outside of his influence.
The US's Operation Iraqi Freedom had the same problems of being spun as a benefit for the Iraqi people. While at the same time it's not something the people asked for or that the UN authorized. Saddam was a bad man, but what does that really have to do with the US and its coalition partners? And what exactly did Iraq even do to warrant it? Nothing.
It's like Russia thinks they are the world police of "Nazis" and NATO thinks they are the world police of everything else. It's all pretty frustrating and disruptive to the international order. It goes back to the philosophy that major nuclear powers can pretty much make up their own rules for everyone else. And 10 years from now we'll still be wringing our hands over Russia's occupation of Ukraine.
Just don't get involved and let Ukraine be absorbed i guess....because nuclear powers do what they want. and on Iraq, Nobody remembers that Saudi Arabia and friends were threatened by Syria as well, who had a larger and more modern military than Iraq, who had Russian advisors and Russian units in country for years who's numbers peaked just before the Iraq moved to take territory and left their threatening stance after the first western units arrived. but that's nobody's business i guess... but this is all
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Just don't get involved and let Ukraine be absorbed i guess.
I think that's what is going to happen. We can make a lot of noise, but our hands are tied on taking direction action.
Isn't Saudi Arabia still waging war in Yemen? Barely a peep out of the media for the last 7 years on it.
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Ok, draw down in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, cut back troops in Europe then intervene in Yemen? You see the choices put forth by people who's only risk in a war economy is who's stock to invest in? The lack of empathy with Yemen is a failure of social order. We pick our leaders and employees by how how much their philosophies support the dragging out of situations like Yemen until that same group decides to declare it "unjust" and "undemocratic", declares a solution is needed, collects their dividends, then t
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You're preaching to the choir. Post-WW2 the world has had a serious problem with the Military-Industrial Complex. And we kept thinking since the Cold War is over that all those problems went away. Despite regular taxpayers being slapped in the face by Halliburton ($7B! [cbsnews.com]) and pardoning Blackwater and the dozens of other grifting defense contractors that have bilked us for years. And the US government is in on the racket, changing the rules [courthousenews.com] to suit their corporate masters.
Free quote of the day: "a bunch of min
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This is why the neocons and the so-called realpolitik promoters are so wrong. Losing the moral high ground is a big loss on the world stage. When countries can
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Ukraine is a war of conquest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The narrative was then as it is now, will Russia be allowed to absorb weak states behind a fog military actions. Serbs were their ally then and they are their ally now, the very states that formed then and are now voicing their intentions to join the EU and/or NATO were told "not to seek independence" by Russia and allies...
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My parent's taught me as a child that two wrongs don't make a right. What NATO did in Kosovo was utterly unjustified. In effect we decided to back a bunch of Al-Qaeda backed Islamist separatists who where and still are bent on creating a greater Albania. and were being "oppressed" because the state were not providing for them in their language. You move to a "foreign" country and Kosovo is undeniably historically Serbian, then you are in Rome and you do as the Romans. That does not involve the state providi
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Oh yeah? You're saying that Serbs are trying to massacre people in Kosovo? Because that's a lie.
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My son just visited Albania. He saw no evidence of that. Coincidentally, he went down to Greece and saw Communists marching in the streets.
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Still not as slick as NATO's "humanitarian" relief in Kosovo.
Or Russia's "neutral" observation before the NATO involvement who began arming the serbs and even appointing themselves to government positions before there was even a government? Then represented that government in the UN and made two statements, Bosnia must never exist and any actions to stop them will force Russia to absorb the republic. Sounds oh so familiar.
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the world economy is a war economy. but at least less so of late. the level of sanctions being used now were unthinkable 40 years ago. it was easier to let people fight it out then collect jewelry and gold teeth after the fact.
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I heard a an old saying long ago from an eastern nation leadership.."why have gold teeth if you are not strong enough to keep them?"
People need to learn.... (Score:2)
DUPE (Score:3)
DUPE
https://it.slashdot.org/story/... [slashdot.org]
Sandworm hackers? (Score:5, Funny)
Are they working for the Harkonnen?
Re:Sandworm hackers? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, they're definitely working for an autocrat named Vladimir.
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Sandworms only serve their own interests. They don't serve anyone.
what is the terminology here ? (Score:2)
"declined to name" (Score:2)
That they "declined to name" is very suspicious. Did they shut off power to the steel mill where 5000 Nazis are holed up, rather than carpet bomb the infrastructure?
Or did they target children's hospitals all over Ukraine?
See, context is king. Transparency is needed for outsiders to take anyone seriously in a war. Propaganda is as real as bombs.