Texas power company hack

That kind of sabotage would harm the company's efforts to sell its electricity in Texas' power market for that day, but it wouldn't threaten plant safety, or cause an outage, says control system cyber security expert Joe Weiss. When he was terminated, Shin allegedly promised to return his company-issue laptop the next day. But he failed to deliver until a corporate security agent showed up at his front porch on March 5 to retrieve the computer.

EFH did not return a phone call Friday. Aside from the financial impact on Colonial Pipeline or the many providers and customers of the fuel it transports, Lee points out that around 40 percent of US electricity in was produced by burning natural gas, more than any other source. That means, he argues, that the threat of cyberattacks on a pipeline presents a significant threat to the civilian power grid. This is a big deal," he adds. A provider got hit with ransomware from a criminal act, this wasn't even a state-sponsored attack, and it impacted the system in this way?

Colonial Pipeline's short public statement says that it has "launched an investigation into the nature and scope of this incident, which is ongoing. The Colonial Pipeline shutdown comes in the midst of an escalating ransomware epidemic: Hackers have digitally crippled and extorted hospitals , hacked law enforcement databases and threatened to publicly out police informants , and paralyzed municipal systems in Baltimore and Atlanta.

The majority of ransomware victims never publicize their attacks. Buchanan compared its magnitude to the Chinese hack of the U. Office of Personnel Management, in which the records of 22 million federal employees and government job applicants were stolen. SolarWinds, headquartered off Southwest Parkway in Southwest Austin, provides network-monitoring and other technical services to hundreds of thousands of organizations around the world, including most Fortune companies and government agencies in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Neither SolarWinds nor U. The hackers would have also had to want to target the organization. Neither the U. As part of the program, the company can adjust customers' thermostats remotely. A similar program called Smart Savers Texas allows for thermostat temperatures to be altered remotely during peak energy events. Erika Diamond, vice president of customer solutions at EnergyHub, which runs Smart Savers Texas, said customers will typically receive an offer to join the program from their energy provider or the manufacturer of their thermostat.

During a peak energy event, the program "increases the temperature on participating thermostats by up to four degrees to reduce energy consumption and relieve stress on the grid," said Diamond. Customers can opt out at any time. Diamond also said events like this are rare, possibly two to eight times each summer.