Potential Damage from Power Grid Attacks

Channel Futures: What sort of damage has resulted from past attacks and could result in future attacks?

Paul Hafen: We’re not talking about merely crippling a military or a base. We’re talking about harming civilians. And that kind of stuff is really what plays on our fears. Who has a vested interest in coming after us? It could be Russia or one of their groups. So the fear is that they could use social engineering, impersonate somebody … and send a file to somebody. And that person in that IT department within the energy sector, as an example, could then unwittingly unleash malware that would sit there maybe dormant until somebody who’s got remote control of that software decides to change the way the power grid looks.

The thing I get asked sometimes is why wouldn’t they already attack us. And there’s a reason they call these attackers APTs. They have patience and they know the more time they have their hooks into a network or into devices, the more they learn about the environment and the more damage they can cause when the time comes. Probably someone’s eyes are already on the surface area. There’s people already in there.