Iranian hackers shut down UK power plant for four days – The Telegraph
Iran-linked hackers shut down a small UK power plant for four days in what The Telegraph described as the first successful attack of its kind on British electricity generation.
The incident, disclosed exclusively by the newspaper, involved hackers affiliated with Iran disabling a relatively small electricity producer. Staff took four days to restore operations. Officials have not identified the site for security reasons, and the outage did not affect the wider power grid or national energy supply.
The attack coincided with Iranian-linked cyber incidents against US water and wastewater infrastructure last month that affected facilities in 12 states, causing flooding, lost water pressure and boil-water advisories in some areas. US authorities initially cited “malicious cyber actors,” later pointing to Tehran.
British officials assessed the UK attack was unlikely intended to harm civilians and was not widely noticed. It may instead have demonstrated that hackers linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could access sensitive systems and shut down infrastructure. A government source called it “a very small scale site, less than a rounding error compared to grid capacity.”
The government briefed power company CEOs and issued written security advice. The incident was reported to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which declined to comment.
A government spokesman said the UK energy system is highly resilient and that there was never a risk to the wider system.
Britain has dozens of small-scale plants, many gas-fired and used intermittently to support the grid.
Iran has intensified cyber operations against Western targets since Middle East conflict escalated and US and Israeli airstrikes began in February. The NCSC urged stronger defenses in March, while its chief executive, Richard Horne, said in June it had handled more than 200 incidents affecting critical national infrastructure over the previous year.
Intelligence assessments have long identified Iran’s cyber capabilities as an asymmetric strength, though the risk of a major successful attack on core UK infrastructure has been rated at 5% to 25%.
