Ukrainian Power Outage Attributed To Hacking

A Ukrainian power outage last year is believed to be the result of a cyberattack.

A Ukrainian power outage last year is believed to be the result of a cyberattack, reports the BBC. 
The incident occurred late in the night on December 17 and caused a blackout in sections of the capital city Kiev for more than an hour. 
Around 200 megawatts or about 20 percent of the city’s nighttime energy needs were reportedly lost in the event, notes Reuters. 
At the time, one official had attributed the problem to “hardware failure or external interference.” 
However, experts now believe it is the latter; Marina Krotofil, Ukrainian security researcher, told Motherboard that the strategy appears to be similar to the one used in a power outage that had happened about a year prior.
She revealed that the most recent attack centered around a shutdown of a system which controls substation breakers.
Krotofil was also quoted as saying about the hackers, “They could do many more things, but obviously they didn't have this as an intent. It was more like a demonstration of capabilities.”
The BBC reports that the perpetrators are unknown, but other breaches have been traced back to Russia.