<p>It has been reported that for the first time in history (that we know of) that a cyberattack has caused a power outage. Hackers have been linked to the major blackout that occurred in Ukraine during the holiday season.</p>
<p>An estimated 700,000 homes in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of the country lost power for several hours on December 23rd. Although it&rsquo;s difficult to determine the real culprits of the outage, this breach has been linked by the researchers at iSIGHT Partner, a ThreatScape ;Cyber Espionage group, to a specific kind of malware called BlackEnergy.</p>
<p>This type of malware wipes files off computer systems, shuts them down and can lead to a blackout. According to John Hultquist, the head of ISIGHT Partner, at least one of the power systems in Ukraine was infected with this malware.  ;</p>
<p>Hultquist has reason to believe that the attacks were by a group iSIGHT calls &ldquo;Sandworm.&rdquo; iSIGHT has witnessed the group using BlackEnergy before. &ldquo;Sandworm&rdquo; was linked to targeting NATO in 2014, along with government organizations in Ukraine, Poland and others in Western Europe.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Sandworm&rdquo; has been associated with the Russian government. Ukrainian officials are pointing the blame for the cyberattack at Russia and Ukraine has launched a full investigation into the outage. Even if this is not of Russia&rsquo;s doing, the relations between these two countries is at an all-time low. This has only added fuel to the fire.</p>
<p>This discovery by iSIGHT and other security firms has global implications. ;&#8220;It&#8217;s always been the scenario we&#8217;ve been worried about for years because it has ramifications across broad sectors,&#8221; said Hultquist. &#8220;Operators who have previously targeted American and European sensitive systems look to have actually carried out a successful attack that turned the lights out.&#8221;</p>
<p>This could have been just a test to see if the hackers could be successful. Although this has happened thousands of miles away from the United States, this doesn&rsquo;t mean that all government security teams should be concerned and equipped for the next cyberattack. This just proves not all wars are fought with guns. In today&rsquo;s world, there is now the treat of digital warfare. ;</p>