Russia hacking our electric utilities

Hackers working for Russia claimed “hundreds of victims” last year in a giant and long-running campaign that put them inside the control rooms of U.S. electric utilities where they could have caused blackouts, federal officials said. They said the campaign likely is continuing.

  WSJ

But who cares, right? Besides, Putin told Trump they don't hack us.

The Russian hackers, who worked for a shadowy state-sponsored group previously identified as Dragonfly or Energetic Bear, broke into supposedly secure, “air-gapped” or isolated networks owned by utilities with relative ease by first penetrating the networks of key vendors who had trusted relationships with the power companies, said officials at the Department of Homeland Security.

“They got to the point where they could have thrown switches” and disrupted power flows, said Jonathan Homer, chief of industrial-control-system analysis for DHS.

So why didn't they?

“They’ve been intruding into our networks and are positioning themselves for a limited or widespread attack,” said Michael Carpenter, former deputy assistant secretary of defense, who now is a senior director at the Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “They are waging a covert war on the West.”

[...]

DHS is conducting the briefings—four are planned—hoping for more industry cooperation. One thing the agency is trying to learn is whether there are new infections, and whether the Russians have figured out ways to defeat security enhancements like multifactor authentication.

In addition, DHS is looking for evidence that the Russians are automating their attacks, which investigators worry could presage a large increase in hacking efforts.

And that's why we need to spend more on military, right?