The American power grid has been hacked.  It also appears that these hackers may take down the entire grid “at will” and induce blackouts when and where they choose.

For an unknown reason, however, the hackers restrained themselves from taking down the power like they did in Ukraine recently.  They simply hacked their way into the system, although speculation is that they just wanted to look around…for now.

You could have seen this one coming a mile away. The narrative is taking shape, folks. The boogie men are being put into place… and when the time is right, “The Powers That Shouldn’t Be”, will send the signal to their henchmen to set off the next crisis, stoking fear in everyone’s hearts. Out of chaos, order! –The Daily Sheeple

A report by internet security experts, Symantec, says that a hacking group called Dragonfly 2.0 has gained access to 20 power company networks.

The targets were in the United States, Turkey, and Switzerland. According to Symantec, the hackers did gain access to the interface they would need to control the power equipment, with which they could cause a widespread blackout.

According to one expert, they were just in there looking around. John Hultquist, a researcher for FireEye security, said of another such intrusion, “In our experience groups that have solely targeted energy like this have been carrying out reconnaissance for attack.” –Organic Prepper

Yet Fortune claims that we should not “freak out” because these hackers got into the power grid.  Fortune went on to say that the American power grid is complex and a take down would be difficult. (Yeah.  So complex hackers can’t get in…oh, wait…) But mainly they simply state without any evidence to back up the subjective statement, that adversaries seeking to take down the grid are at the beginning of their journey of destruction, and not at the end.

These adversaries had access to the networks that operate the industrial equipment used to power our country. That sounds scary. But the belief pushed by governments, Hollywood movie scripts, and media headlines for years—that we are standing on the brink of cyber-induced blackouts and mass chaos—is misinformed. Our adversaries are at the starting point of their journey to cause significant disruption to our power grid, not the finish line. –Fortune

But that isn’t comforting to those who understand what a power grid failure would look like, in the grand scheme of things. Disabeling large portions of the grid would cause chaos.  And many, including Symantec, appear to think this was a much bigger issue than initially thought. While the cyber security company believes that this hack was to just “poke around,” it signals that those seeking to do harm are moving onto their next phase of an attack. With recent campaigns potentially providing them with access to operational systems, access could be used for more disruptive purposes in future.

Back in July of this year, hackers got into an American nuclear power plant in Kansas. On the bright side, they were just into the business side of the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant near Burlington, Kansas, and did not obtain access to the controls. But it’s still pretty unsettling that they’d even get that close. If someone was able to get into the control section, not only could they cause a power outage, but they could potentially disable the nuclear safeguards. Eric Chien suspects that while this hack was originally blamed on the Russians (because, really, what isn’t blamed on the Russians?) that the Dragonfly 2.0 hackers were the ones who were responsible. “It’s highly unlikely this is just coincidental.” –The Organic Prepper

The Organic Prepper also points out that it’s hard to miss the fact that this could be nothing more than a red flag event.

Symantec’s report refuses to disclose which power plants were compromised, but there seems to be no doubt the hackers were able to gain access to operational control of them. And while this has been going on for a few years now, they’re getting bolder and nearly have the pieces in place to widespread sabotage our power grid.

Some code strings in the malware were in Russian. However, some were also in French, which indicates that one of these languages may be a false flag. Conflicting evidence and what appear to be attempts at misattribution make it difficult to definitively state where this attack group is based or who is behind it. –The Organic Prepper

Advancements in technology have made manual controls obsolete. Meaning that controlling the power grid is a matter of know-how and internet prowess.  Cyber warfare is the war of the future and there is more and more proof that it isn’t a matter of if, but when.