JOSSICA - jossica.comHackers linked to Iran have been blamed for a cyberattack that forced a small British power facility to shut down for four days, raising concerns over the vulnerability of the UK’s energy infrastructure.
The attack took place in July and targeted a small gas-fired “peaker” plant, according to reports. The owner and location of the facility have not been disclosed.
The plant had a capacity of about 15 megawatts and was connected to a local electricity distribution network. It was not considered critical to the national grid.
The UK has around 300 similar peaker plants, with a combined capacity of between 4GW and 7GW. They are designed to provide additional electricity when demand increases and are typically operated remotely using programmable logic controllers.
The incident was reported to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of GCHQ. No power cuts were reported, and the attack did not threaten the wider electricity system.
The British government has confirmed that a cyber incident affected a small-scale generator but has not publicly attributed the attack to Iran.
Energy minister Michael Shanks said: “To be clear: there was no threat to the wider grid and nobody lost power.”
He added: “The generator in question is tiny especially compared to what most of us would class as a ‘power plant/station’.”
A government source told The Sunday Telegraph: “We have thresholds for important generators to legally notify us of cyber activity, and this site is nowhere near. It’s a very small-scale site, less than a rounding error compared to grid capacity.”
The incident has prompted concerns over Iran’s ability and willingness to target British infrastructure.
A former security official said: “This is a clear warning shot from the Iranian state. They’ve already disrupted global oil supplies. Now they’re threatening to attack critical national infrastructure in the UK.”
Alicia Kearns, the shadow security minister, said the attack “must not be shrugged off”.
She said: “It should be the shot across the bow needed to wake-up the government.
“Our critical infrastructure was built for reliability, not for an age of contest. It is lightly defended and in many cases laid bare on Google Maps for any hostile actor to identify.
“Take out one asset or electricity pylon and a few hundred homes go dark. Take out the wrong node and it’s thousands, for weeks. At that point you are no longer managing an outage, you are managing public confidence in the state’s ability to keep the lights on.
“Frontier AI has collapsed the cost of finding and exploiting those weaknesses. The capability that used to require a state now requires little more than a laptop.
“We spend billions deterring threats that arrive by submarine and ballistic missile, but the government is insufficiently focused on the vulnerabilities of the everyday infrastructure we rely on. We need an immediate strategic review of where Britain is genuinely vulnerable, and government action to defend us, now.”
Lord Walney, the government’s former adviser on political violence, said: “This underlines that Iran is conducting a hybrid war against the UK with significant impact on British citizens. The UK government likes to emphasise it did not join the recent military action against Iran but it is clear that the Iranian regime is trying to harm the country whether or not we stand on the sidelines.
“Ministers must urgently step up a co-ordinated strategy that increases resilience against Iranian activity at all levels.”
The attack comes amid warnings over increasing state-linked cyber activity against Britain.
NCSC chief executive Richard Horne said this month that hostile states were linked to around three-quarters of cyber incidents affecting the UK’s critical systems over the previous year.
The NCSC has identified Russia, China and Iran among the states posing cyber threats to the UK.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero briefed energy company executives following the latest incident. It also wrote directly to companies with advice on protecting their systems.
The government said: “The UK has a highly resilient energy system. We work closely with the energy sector to protect infrastructure and ensure the highest security standards.
“This story refers to an incident impacting a small-scale energy generator, and at no point was there a risk to the wider energy system.”
The incident comes as the government moves to strengthen cyber security requirements for essential services.
The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill would expand the range of cyber incidents that regulated organisations must report.
Under the proposed rules, organisations would have to provide an initial notification of a significant incident within 24 hours and a full report within 72 hours. The NCSC would be informed at the same time as the relevant regulator.
The legislation would also expand the organisations covered by the UK’s cyber security regime and strengthen regulators’ enforcement powers.
Britain is allowing classified information on long-range missile technology to be shared with Ukraine, as Kyiv seeks to strengthen its ability to strike deep inside Russian-held territory.
The move was immediately condemned by a senior Kremlin official, who described the plan as adding “fuel to the fire” and undermining the prospects for peace.
The British government has agreed that defence company MBDA can share classified information on UK components used in the French SCALP long-range missile, an equivalent of Britain’s Storm Shadow cruise missile.
The decision emerged as Andy Burnham made his first visit to Kyiv, where he hit back at President Putin over Russian criticism of British military support for Ukraine.
The Kremlin said Britain’s decision would add “fuel to the fire” and damage efforts to bring the war to an end.
Burnham responded before chairing a meeting of the coalition of the willing, the European allies of Ukraine, on Monday: “Who started the fire? That’s the question, isn’t it?”
Speaking alongside President Zelensky of Ukraine, Burnham compared the country’s resistance against Russia to Britain’s role in the Second World War. “My nation kept the flame of European freedom alive in the 20th century,” he said. “You hold that flame in the 21st.”
Burnham continued: “Despite Russia’s outrageous threats to my country, we will continue our support for Ukraine … Ukraine has been Europe’s protector, not a drain on our security but the front line in keeping Europe safe.”
Storm Shadow is one of the most powerful long-range weapons supplied to Ukraine by Britain. The 5.1-metre missile weighs about 1.3 tonnes and has an officially stated range of more than 250km, allowing aircraft to launch it from well outside heavily defended areas.
It carries a 450kg BROACH penetrating warhead designed to destroy hardened targets, including command bunkers, ammunition stores, airfields and bridges. The missile flies at low altitude to evade air defences before using an infrared seeker to identify its target during the final stages of flight. Each missile is estimated to cost about £2 million.
Burnham had earlier said Britain needed to be “bolder” and establish closer ties with the European Union, hinting at a closer relationship on matters such as youth mobility.
He told Antonio Costa, the president of the European Council, that greater co-operation was required and called for a “step change in relations”.
A No 10 spokesman said: “The two leaders underlined the importance of being ambitious to drive a step change in relations. The UK had to be bolder in terms of getting closer to the bloc, the prime minister said. That included building on the close defence and security ties already forged between the UK and European allies to drive greater co-operation across all areas of the relationship.”
Meanwhile, President Zelensky has said a set of proposals to end the war in Ukraine has been drawn up with the United States and Europe, despite Russia vowing that it intends to keep fighting until it has toppled the government in Kyiv.
The Ukrainian president said on Sunday that Kyiv had worked with President Trump’s envoys and European officials on the plan. He said it would involve a ceasefire, a reciprocal withdrawal from the front line by Russian and Ukrainian troops and the creation of a buffer zone.
“There are several more ideas from the American side, as far as we know. They want to find the right moment to share them. We are waiting for them,” Zelensky added.
A Vatican envoy arrived in Russia on Monday, prompting speculation that he could pass on the proposals. Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s secretary for relations with states, is due to meet Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, on Tuesday.
However, Russia has previously rejected similar proposals and hopes of a breakthrough are low. Lavrov said at the weekend that Russia would continue waging war in Ukraine until it had brought down Zelensky’s “neo-Nazi regime”.
Lavrov told state media that a ceasefire would allow the “Nazi metastases” to spread from Ukraine. “This would be a betrayal of what our grandfathers and great-grandfathers achieved by defeating Nazism — once and for all, as it seemed to us then,” he added.
Kremlin propaganda has falsely portrayed Zelensky, who is Jewish, and his government as neo-Nazis since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Zelensky also said there was widespread opposition to the war inside Russia. “Many people in Russia want the war to end,” he said.
Two-thirds of Russians say they want to see peace talks, according to the Levada Center, which is widely regarded as Russia’s only independent pollster.