The recent cyberattack on the Ukraine’s power grid has caused several organizations to rethink the threats cyberattacks posed to the U.S. power grid. It appears tThe Ukraine’s power incident, which disrupted electricity for 80,000 customers, is the first publicly disclosed outage resulting from a cyberattack. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that the attack was initiated through a spear-phishing and that leveraged a corrupted Microsoft Word attachment, which That attachment was what allowed the BlackEnergy malware to infect the Ukraine's their systems.
INTEL: The cyberattack on the Ukraine’s Prykarpattyaoblenergo utility resulted in the disruption of electricity to 80,000 customers.
The successful Ukraine attack in the Ukraine prompted DHS and the FBI to create and start delivering an unclassified Web briefing titled, "Ukraine Cyber Attack: Implications for U.S. Stakeholders." It is important to keep in mind that fFederal authorities also recently disclosed that the cyberattack on the small Bowman Dam in Rye, New York was had been attributed to seven hackers in Iran.
All of this has raised concerns of many in government as well as some in the private sector and That has once again prompted discussions about the likelihood of a cyberwar in the not-so-distant future. As with previous discussions, the question resurfaces, "So what level of cyberattack would be considered an act of war?" Last year, During his nomination hearings last year, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, then nominee stated before told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Armed Services that an act of cyberwarfare is defined as a cyberattack on critical infrastructure, the economy or U.S. military operations.
That is a very general definition. Under that definition, the cyberattack on the Bowman Dam would constitute an act of cyberwarfare. Popular opinion seems to support the conclusion that there this is no singular one, clear answer to the question. It appears authorities are increasingly of the opinion that each incident must be assessed individuallyand therefore no one definition can be applied. However, one growing belief is that the U.S. does not want a concise definition. Some say that would draw a hard-fast line and if it was crossed, would require a military response. After all, it would be an act of war. While this is an interesting topic for discussion, the ambiguity must be addressed ASAP.
INTEL: One energy sector organization that operates in multiple states experienced over 4,000 cyberattack attempts on their system.
