Offshoot of China's APT41 Breached Asian Country's National Power Grid

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Researchers at Symantec report that an apparent offshoot of China’s APT41 cyber spy group, which they call RedFly, breached the computer network of an unnamed national power grid in an Asian country.

The breach began in February of this year. It persisted for at least six months as the hackers expanded their foothold throughout the IT network of the country's national electric utility. However, it's not clear how close the hackers came to gaining the ability to disrupt power generation or transmission.

The unnamed country whose grid was targeted in the breach was one that China would “have an interest in from a strategic perspective,” hints Dick O'Brien, a principal intelligence analyst on Symantec's research team. O'Brien notes that Symantec doesn't have direct evidence that the hackers were focused on sabotag…