In April this year, a blackout affected the Iberian Peninsula, with reports that internet services were disrupted as far away as Greenland and Morocco.
It took less than 24 hours for the regional electricity operators to get the grid back online, but the incident was a stark reminder of how vulnerable power supplies are to malicious attacks.
US officials have issued repeated warnings that state-sponsored hackers are targeting the American grid, while in 2015 a Russian military unit successfully severed the Ukrainian grid.
America’s grid is more complex than most, with three large interconnected systems spanning the continental US, plus stand-alone networks in Alaska and Texas.
Researchers have found that as many as 10% of America’s power lines could be vulnerable to breakdown, which could then trigger a domino effect that takes down the entire system.
In 2016, then Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Craig Fugate told Congress that water and wastewater systems were particularly at risk, and these could easily be knocked offline for prolonged periods.
Insurance underwriter Lloyd’s of London estimates that a Trojan virus impacting 50 generators would be enough to trigger a nationwide cascade effect, plunging 93 million people into darkness and causing economic losses of $1tn.
