The coordinated assault on Poland’s energy grid in late December focused a number of distributed vitality useful resource (DER) websites throughout the nation, together with mixed warmth and energy (CHP) services and wind and photo voltaic dispatch programs.
Though the attacker compromised operational expertise (OT) programs damaging “key tools past restore,” they didn’t disrupt energy, totalling 1.2 GW or 5% of Poland’s vitality provide.
Primarily based on public studies, there are a minimum of 12 confirmed affected websites. Nevertheless, researchers at Dragos, a important industrial infrastructure (OT) and management programs (ICS) safety firm say that the quantity is roughly 30.
Flaws and misconfigurations
Researchers at Dragos, a important industrial infrastructure (OT) and management programs (ICS) safety firm, printed extra particulars concerning the assault and say that the absence of energy outages doesn’t point out a much less regarding incident, however ought to be seen as a warning concerning the vulnerability of decentralized vitality programs.
“An assault on an influence grid at any time is irresponsible, however to hold it out within the depths of winter is probably deadly to the civilian inhabitants depending on it,” reads the Dragos report.
“It’s unlucky that those that assault these programs seem to intentionally select timing that maximizes influence on civilian populations.”
Dragos attributes the assault with reasonable confidence to a Russian risk actor it tracks as Electrum, which, though it overlaps with Sandworm (APT44), the researchers underline that it’s a distinct exercise cluster.
ESET printed a report just a few days again about APT44, linking it to failed harmful assaults in opposition to Poland’s energy grid utilizing malware referred to as DynoWiper.
Dragos hyperlinks Electrum to different wipers deployed in opposition to Ukrainian networks, together with power-supply models corresponding to Caddywiper and Industroyer2, noting that the risk group’s operations have not too long ago expanded to extra nations.
Electrum focused uncovered and weak programs concerned in dispatch and grid-facing communication, distant terminal models (RTUs), community edge gadgets, monitoring and management programs, and Home windows-based machines at DER websites.
Educated attacker
Primarily based on proof from an incident response at one of many affected services, Dragos notes that the attackers demonstrated deep information and understanding of how these gadgets are deployed and operated, repeatedly compromising related RTU and edge-device configurations throughout a number of websites.
Electrum efficiently disabled communications tools at a number of websites, leading to a lack of distant monitoring and management, however energy technology on the models continued with out interruption.
Sure OT/ICS gadgets had been disabled, and their configurations had been corrupted past restoration, whereas Home windows programs on the websites had been wiped.
Even when the assaults had been profitable in reducing the facility, the comparatively slender focusing on scope wouldn’t have been sufficient to trigger a nationwide blackout in Poland.
Nevertheless, they may have induced vital destabilization of the system frequency. “Such frequency deviations have induced cascading failures in different electrical programs, together with the 2025 Iberian grid collapse,” the researchers say.
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