AP Investigation: U.S. power grid vulnerable to foreign hacks

Jae Hong / AP

Editors Note: This is part of a yearlong effort by The Associated Press and the Associated Press Media Editors, examining the state of America's infrastructure.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Security researcher Brian Wallace was on the trail of hackers who had snatched a California university's housing files when he stumbled into a larger nightmare: Cyberattackers had opened a pathway into the networks running the United States power grid.

Digital clues pointed to Iranian hackers. And Wallace found that they had already taken passwords, as well as engineering drawings of dozens of power plants, at least one with the title "Mission Critical." The drawings were so detailed that experts say skilled attackers could have used them, along with other toolscrisis. And the Department of Homeland Security announced about a year ago that a separate hacking campaign, believed by some private firms to have Russian origins, had injected software with malware that allowed the attackers to spy on U.S. energy companies.

"You want to be stealth," said Lillian Ablon, a cybersecurity expert at the RAND Corporation. "That's the ultimate power, because when you need to do something you are already in place."

The hackers have gained access to an aging, outdated power system. Many of the substations and equipment that move power across the U.S. are decrepit and were never built with network security in mind; hooking the plants up to the Internet over the last decade has given hackers new backdoors in. Distant wind farms, home solar panels, smart