Russia's Sandworm Attacked Ukrainian Power Utility During Missile Strikes

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Photo by Ivan Lapyrin on Unsplash

Researchers at Mandiant report that during Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine, Russia's GRU military intelligence agency known as Sandworm, or Unit 74455 of the spy agency, targeted civilians with a blackout attack at the same time missile strikes hit their city, an unprecedented and brutal combination of digital and physical warfare.

The group carried out this third successful power grid attack targeting a Ukrainian electric utility in October of last year, causing a blackout for an unknown number of Ukrainian civilians.

Unlike any previous hacker-induced blackouts, Mandiant says the cyberattack coincided with the start of a series of missile strikes targeting Ukrainian critical infrastructure across the country, which included victims in the same city as the utility where Sandworm triggered its power outage. T…