Russian hackers ‘opened taps on Norwegian dam'

Times

7 hours ago

The head of Norway's main security agency has said Russian hackers seized control of a dam for four hours in April.
The cyberattack on the facility in Bremanger, 100 miles north of Bergen on the western coast, involved fully opening the flow valves, releasing nearly 500 litres of water a second.
It is the first time the Norwegian authorities have publicly identified Russia as the culprit.
Beate Gangas, director of the PST, Norway's security service, said the Bremanger incident was part of a new wave of attacks from 'pro-Russian cyber actors'.
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'The aim of this type of operation is to influence and to cause fear and chaos among the general population,' she said in a speech. 'Our Russian neighbour has become more dangerous.'
At the time of the hack, independent analysts said the damage had been minor and the real significance of the incident was symbolic.
Hydroelectric dams produce more than 90 per cent of Norway's power and there is concern about the potential for sabotage.
In this case, however, the dam on Lake Risevatnet is thought to primarily control the supply of freshwater to a nearby fish farm. The watercourse it supplies can handle significantly higher flow volumes than those unleashed by the hackers, and the fault was detected relatively quickly and remedied.
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Nor does the cyberattack appear to have been sophisticated: Breivika Eiendom, the dam's owner, indicated that the hackers had probably seized on a weak password.
Yet the incident has driven home the vast scope for electronic sabotage of Europe's physical infrastructure, amid warnings that the Russian military intelligence service and its network of hackers have begun aggressively targeting private sector companies involved in supporting Ukraine.
In February the PST's annual national security report said hackers working on behalf of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea posed a 'significant' and 'unpredictable' threat to Norway.
It also noted an 'increased likelihood that Russian intelligence services will try to carry out sabotage operations in Norway'.
Norwegian officials suspect that Russia orchestrated the sabotage of an underwater fibre-optic data cable linking the Svalbard archipelago to mainland Norway in January 2022, weeks before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
However, the Russian embassy in Oslo dismissed the claim that Russia was behind the attack on the dam as 'unfounded and politically motivated'.