Hackers Can Now Cause Blackouts On America's Electrical Grid, Report

It was inevitable that someday, hackers would have the ability to exert control over the U.S. electrical grid.  According to the computer security firm Symantec, someday is today.

Hacking attacks over the last several months that targeted U.S. energy companies have been able to gain "operational control" over systems, thus threatening blackouts across the U.S., says Symantec.

 The hacker group known as DragonFly 2.0 was able to gain control in at least 20 places, according to the firm.

Wired:

Symantec on Wednesday revealed a new campaign of attacks by a group it is calling Dragonfly 2.0, which it says targeted dozens of energy companies in the spring and summer of this year. In more than 20 cases, Symantec says the hackers successfully gained access to the target companies" networks. And at a handful of US power firms and at least one company in Turkey – none of which Symantec will name – their forensic analysis found that the hackers obtained what they call operational access: control of the interfaces power company engineers use to send actual commands to equipment like circuit breakers, giving them the ability to stop the flow of electricity into US homes and businesses.

"There"s a difference between being a step away from conducting sabotage and actually being in a position to conduct sabotage ... being able to flip the switch on power generation," says Eric Chien, a Symantec security analyst. "We"re now talking about on-the-ground technical evidence this could happen in the US, and there"s nothing left standing in the way except the motivation of some actor out in the world."

Never before have hackers been shown to have that level of control of American power company systems, Chien notes. The only comparable situations, he says, have been the repeated hacker attacks on the Ukrainian grid that twice caused power outages in the country in late 2015 and 2016, the first known hacker-induced blackouts.

Security firms like FireEye and Dragos have pinned those Ukrainian attacks on a hacker group known as Sandworm, believed to be based in Russia. But Symantec stopped short of blaming the more recent attacks on any country or even trying to explain the hackers" motives. Chien says the company has found no connections between Sandworm and the intrusions it has tracked. Nor has it directly connected the Dragonfly 2.0 campaign to the string of hacker intrusions at US power companies – including a Kansas nuclear facility – known as Palmetto Fusion, which unnamed officials revealed in July and later tied to Russia.

Chien does note, however, that the timing and public descriptions of the Palmetto Fusion hacking campaigns match up with its Dragonfly findings. "It"s highly unlikely this is just coincidental," Chien says. But he adds that while the Palmetto Fusion intrusions included a breach of a nuclear power plant, the most serious DragonFly intrusions Symantec tracked penetrated only non-nuclear energy companies, which have less strict separations of their internet-connected IT networks and operational controls.

The first question I would want answered is, if they have that sort of control, why not exercise it?  Why no blackouts or service interruptions in the U.S.?

Hacking Sony or another private business is one thing.  Fooling with our electrical infrastructure is many orders of magnitude more serious.  If a sovereign nation were behind such an event, it would be tantamount to a declaration of war.  Unless the attacking nation was supremely confident that the hack couldn"t be traced back to it, the nation would be unlikely to attempt it.

Causing a blackout in a major urban area would almost certainly result in many deaths.  We know this from previous blackouts in New York City, where the 2003 power outage is estimated to have resulted in 100 deaths.  This would be intolerable, and if the attack could be traced back to Russia or China, it would result in retaliation by the U.S.  We"re no slouches ourselves when it comes to cyber-warfare, and we could almost certainly make any country pay dearly.

But in a time of war, that kind of control over our electrical grid could wreak havoc and sow confusion and fear among the populace.  In the meantime, it would behoove the government to work with industry to harden our systems to prevent that kind of catastrophe.

Jailed hacker Guccifer says U.S. government fabricated Guccifer 2.0 to frame Russia

During his plane ride extradition from Romania to the United States, Guccifer told Fox News’Pamela Browne that one of his handlers mentioned: “what would your opinion be if another Guccifer showed up?” He then went on to say that “Guccifer 2.0 is an inside job” by U.S. government agencies.

Marcel Lehel Lazar, 45, known by his infamous online moniker “Guccifer,” is serving a 7-year sentence in Romania his home country for hacking local politicians.

Last year, Lazar was extradited to the U.S. during the 2016 election. He claims that his handler assigned to the State Department slyly mentioned creating another Guccifer.

“Ok, so now, now I think that it is maybe Guccifer two-zero, the State Department, or this guy from the State Department, who is handling my case,” he said. “I think it was more like they were planning this. I mean they, this guy from the State Department.”

“So I think Guccifer two-zero is an inside job,” Lazar added. “I think Guccifer two-zero is something made from some guys at the State Department. Some guys from the cyber command of the NSA, and some guys from the Vault, Vault 7 of the CIA. So there are these guys, you know Pam, I’m in this business for sort of 15 years now, this is my take on this whole. They were setting up something of Guccifer two-zero. Because the State Department guy was asking me, ‘What is your opinion,’ or something like this, ‘what do you say if another Guccifer is showing up?’

“And I said, ‘You know something, I expect that not one, but one hundred Guccifers will show up.’”

Interestingly enough, Guccifer 2.0 documents have been analyzed and its meta data has proven to show fakery from using the language of Russian locale inside a word processor just as Guccifer alluded.

Additionally, the malware sample given which suggests the DNC was hacked has been proven to be a public Ukrainian PHP Shell called Grizzly Steppe ;the malware was outdated and not even private malicious code according to Word Fence which analyzed the sample DHS/FBI provided.

“The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don’t appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes. The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website,” Word Fence wrote.

It has since been proved through meta-data that the files Guccifer 2.0 uploaded “NGP-VAN” were copied locally not hacked, Disobedient Media reported.

Guccifer also expanded on his breach of Clinton’s server stating “everyone was inside it.”

“Look, about the server in Chappaqua, in New York state,” he said. “That server was scanned well before me. It was scanned 2012, from IP numbers in Serbia, Belgrade, it was scanned again in 2013 from IPs in Ukraine and Russia. The point is, somebody had mirrored, had copied, mirrored the whole server of Hillary Clinton, the question is how many countries. One, two or three? At one point, it was the whole server. I just think, I’m sure some people, I can say some people, I’m sure some people have the server contents.”

“It’s not the case that it was or it was not mirrored, her server,” he said. “The case is how many people did this. How many countries?

FBI Director James Comey denies that Guccifer ever hacked Clinton’s server despite outdated software and that the server was open to RDP and VNC connections which wouldn’t have even required any actual hacking, according to the Register.

“He did not. He admitted that was a lie,” Comey said. “We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account.”

This reporter was handed a leak link dump of Clinton’s email case information from an FBI source a few days ago that documented the entire case against Clinton, including that her emails were for sale on the darkweb for several years for $500K. The author of the hacked emails then pulled them and handed them to the FBI. The House and Senate Intelligence Committees also claimed they possessed the so-called “Russian files” consisting of Clinton emails that ended up on ‘Deep Web’ allegedly by hacking a server setup by Guccifer in Romania. The FBI later confirmed the existence of this server and the files contained on it in the fourth part of its report on Clinton’s email scandal.

Is that the mirror of the server that Guccifer is talking about as his own?

Guccifer plans to ask to remain in Romanian prison and not be returned to America to serve his 52-month sentence for U.S. computer hacking crimes including unauthorized access to a protected computer and aggravated identity theft.

Guccifer was the first to reveal to the world that Clinton used a non-secure private email address while serving as secretary of state when he posted Sidney Blumenthal’s emails revealing her insecure private address hdr22@clintonemail.com instead of a .gov domain.

Via Activist Post

Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post and is Director of Content for Coinivore. Follow Aaron at Twitter and Steemit.

Hacker Guccifer 2.0 Says Election Could Be Rigged, Promises to Monitor ‘from Inside’

November 5, 2016   |   admintam

(ZHE) Before the recent torrent of daily Podesta email dumps brought renewed attention to Wikileaks (and accusations Julian Assange was working with the Kremlin despite his recent denial, which ultimately cost him his internet access), the media’s attention was closely focused on the recently emerged hacker known as Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be behind the hacking of the nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails and other documents distributed over the summer by WikiLeaks, and who likewise was accused of cooperating with Russia.

Earlier today, after a two week silence, Guccifer 2.0 reemerged, with a post on his blog, in which he alleges that he has information from inside the Federal Election Commission, according to which “democrats may rig the elections.” He then adds “this may be possible because of the software installed in the FEC networks by the large IT companies.”

“INFO FROM INSIDE THE FEC: THE DEMOCRATS MAY RIG THE ELECTIONS

“I’d like to warn you that the Democrats may rig the elections on November 8. This may be possible because of the software installed in the FEC networks by the large IT companies.

“As I’ve already said, their software is of poor quality, with many holes and vulnerabilities.

“I have registered in the FEC electronic system as an independent election observer; so I will monitor that the elections are held honestly.

“I also call on other hackers to join me, monitor the elections from inside and inform the U.S. society about the facts of electoral fraud.”

It is unclear what FEC information the hacker was in possession of, or was referring to, and how he intends to observe the elections. A recent video by Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting provided a real-time demo of the GEMS vote-fraud system, “fraction magic,” an election theft mechanism with context and explanation. There is much more detail on the BlackBoxVoting website.

The demonstration below used a real voting system and real vote databases and takes place in seconds across multiple jurisdictions. Over 5000 subcontractors and middlemen have the access to perform this for any or all clients. It can give contract signing authority to whoever the user chooses. All political power can be converted to  the hands of a few anonymous subcontractors. It’s a product. It’s scaleable. It learns its environment and can adjust to any political environment, any demographic. It runs silently, invisibly, and can produce plausible results that really pass for the real thing.

It is possible that this is the process that Guccifer is referring to, although we are merely speculating. We are confident he will provide more detail shortly.

While we wait, watch the following video explaining how elections can be (and perhaps are) rigged.

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This article (Hacker Guccifer 2.0 Says Election Could Be Rigged, Promises to Monitor ‘from Inside’) by Tyler Durden originally appeared on ZeroHedge.com and was used with permission. Tune in! Anti-Media Radio airs Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos: edits@theantimedia.org.