CS Energy foiled a ransomware attack

A cyberattack hit CS Energy in Australia on Saturday, November 27, experts believe the attack was orchestrated by Chinese hackers.

A ransomware cyberattack hit a major energy network operated by CS Energy, that attack could have had dramatic consequences leaving millions of homes without energy.

The attack took place on Saturday, November 27, experts believe it was launched by Chinese hackers.

The attack was detected and neutralized just in time, before it had the potential to shut down two major thermal coal plants.

“If the attack had been successful, 3500 megawatts of power would have been taken out of the grid, enough for between 1.4 and three million homes.” reported the website News.com.au.

The quick response of CS Energy avoided the catastrophe, the CEO Andrew Bills explained that the company isolate the corporate network from the Callide and Kogan Creek power stations to prevent impacting their generators.

The company notified Federal and state agencies and retained cyber security experts to investigate the incident.

“CS Energy moved quickly to contain this incident by segregating the corporate network from other internal networks and enacting business continuity processes,” Mr Bills said. “Unfortunately, cyber events are a growing trend in Australia and overseas. This incident may have affected our corporate network, but we are fortunate to have a resilient and highly skilled workforce who remain focused on ensuring CS Energy continues to deliver electricity to Queenslanders.”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, ransomware)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.