Russia hits European thermal power plant in attempted ‘destructive’ cyberattack – Pro-Kremlin hackers are engaging in ‘riskier and more reckless behavior’ in latest attempt to cripple Western critical infrastructure

Industrial geothermal power plant pipelines at sunset in Larderello, Tuscany region. Steam pipes and equipment for renewable energy production with dramatic pink sky.

• Russia has been accused of attacking a thermal power plant in Sweden
• The attack was thwarted by built-in defense mechanisms
• Russia is engaging in 'riskier and more reckless behavior'

Russian hackers have once again been blamed for a cyberattack against a European power plant.

The Swedish government accused Pro-Russian hackers of trying to knock one of Sweden’s thermal power plants offline.

“Pro-Russian groups that once carried out denial-of-service attacks are now attempting destructive cyber attacks against organizations in Europe,” Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Sweden’s minister of civil defense, said during a press conference.

Another attack against critical infrastructure

The Swedish government said that the attackers had “connections to Russian intelligence and security services,” with the attack showing Russia-aligned groups were engaging in “riskier and more reckless behavior.”

The thermal power plant involved in the attack was not named, but Bohlin added the attack was stopped “due to a built-in protection mechanism.”

Russia has been accused of multiple attacks against European critical infrastructure, with attacks growing more frequent since the outbreak of war with Ukraine in February 2022.

In the January before the invasion of Ukraine, a large-scale attack launched by members of Russia’s Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (GRU) that targeted government agencies and infrastructure as a precursor to the main invasion.

Russia’s GRU has also been accused of launching widespread campaigns to infiltrate Western critical infrastructure since 2021, likely with the intention of maintaining persistence until the perfect time to strike.

More recently, researchers found links between an attack that attempted to shut down Poland’s energy system and a Russia-aligned advanced persistent threat (APT) group.

But Russia strikes far further than Europe, and has been spotted probing US critical infrastructure for vulnerabilities, including attacks against American water treatment facilities, the US Federal Court Filing System, and a campaign that saw the email accounts of officials working across several US federal agencies breached.

Via TechCrunch