As intruders caused a blackout by hijacking the network of a Ukrainian energy company, spooked engineers recorded this video.
THE BEST WORK of hackers tends to remain invisible. But when sophisticated intruders broke into the computer networks of regional energy firms in Ukraine in 2015 and cut power to roughly a quarter million people, their tampering didn’t go unnoticed. In this rare instance, the staff of one of those electric utilities managed to capture the hackers’ handiwork on video, which you can watch above.
Two days before Christmas in 2015, engineers at the Prykkarpatyaoblenergo regional energy company in Western Ukraine found themselves locked out of their PCs. More troubling still, their mouse cursors moved of their own accord. The workers watched as hackers methodically clicked on circuit breakers in their grid operation software, each time opening the breakers and cutting power to another swath of the region.
