Russian Hackers Threaten Western Power Companies

by JASmius

Barack bless that "reset button".  Without that, we'd REALLY be in trouble:

A Russian group of hackers known as “Energetic Bear” is attacking energy companies in the U.S. and Europe and may be capable of disrupting power supplies, cybersecurity researchers said.

The hackers, also called “Dragonfly,” appear to have the resources, size and organization that suggest government involvement, security company Symantec Corp. said in a blog post Monday. The attackers are targeting grid operators, petroleum pipeline operators, electricity generation firms and other “strategically important” energy companies, it said.

Those group’s activities highlight the increasing reach of cyberattacks as ever-larger parts of the economy become connected and controlled via the Web. They may also be symptomatic of governments using hacking to support political strategies. More than half of the infections found were in the U.S. and Spain, Symantec said, while Serbia, Greece, Romania, Poland, Turkey, Germany, Italy and France were also targeted.

For all of you who still think in terms of Vladimir Putin's efforts to resurrect the Soviet Union as something that's happening "over there" that "doesn't affect us," yes, you should be ashamed of yourselves.  Because it's likely to lead to a scenario like this, minus the intervening steps:

The TV stations next tried the Internet, but it was as if someone had just flicked it off. There was nothing but electronic silence. A coordinated cyber strike had hacked through America’s electronic defenses and shut down the web. Many of the hacks came not from Chinese and Russian teams across the world but from agents within America, infiltrated into key positions in American government and business, who introduced their malware directly into vital systems with thumb drives.

Simultaneously, outside major metropolises, groups of well-trained commandos, driving SUVs, followed the routes between power transmission stations that they had rehearsed using paper street maps (America’s GPS satellites having been eliminated in the opening minutes). With rifles, they opened fire on the critical transformer equipment, which was guarded only by chain link fences and cameras that no one monitored. When the irreplaceable equipment was shorted out and burning, they drove on to the next site and destroyed it. Between the cyber chaos and physical attacks, cities began to black out.

America ground to a halt, blind and paralyzed.

Worst case scenarios only remain that way if no steps are taken to counter them.  That's from whence cometh the "balance" in the phrase "balance of power".  Barack Obama, making the Avatar claim ("restoring balance to the world"), has in fact been destroying that balance by removing America as the benevolent global hegemon.  This leads "rogue" regimes - whether in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, Tehran, or elsewhere, and perhaps all of them in cahoots - to believe that ambitions previously unthinkable are now becoming very thinkable.

"Energetic Bear" won't necessarily single-handedly bring us (the rest of the way) down.  But they've got lots and lots and lots of friends.

Unlike America.