Dragonfly: New Computer Virus Can Cripple Power Plants With the Click of a MouseMac Slavo At the very moment Napolitano made her comments, whether she knew it or not, a group of eastern European hackers believed to be working closely with Russias electronic spy agency had compromised upwards of 1,000 key infrastructure components around the world that included wind turbines, gas pipelines, aviation system and power plants. According to cyber security firm Symantec these state-sponsored hackers breached industrial control systems equipment by first hacking the physical computers responsible for managing grid componentsand then forcing them to download malware that made it possible to take control of the entire system remotely. Once in, the hacking group known to security engineers as Dragonfly was not only able to monitor the operational status of every component on the accessed networks, but they had gained the ability to shut them down completely with a single click of the mouse. But Stuxnet and Energetic Bear are not unique in how they compromise utility infrastructure networks. The Department of Homeland Security was tracking a number of viruses and trojans as early as 2011 that had similar capabilities. Though the extent of the breaches is not clear, DHS says that it is widespread: According to well known security firm McAfee, the security holes in Americas ailing infrastructure are staggering. A report issued by the firm says that essential utility components like water, power and oil refineries have systems that can easily be compromised by enterprising hackers: The effects of such an attack, whether executed by a foreign enemy or rogue terrorists, would be devastating to a country like the United States which depends on a modern electrical and communications infrastructure to function. A long-term event such as the national power outage described by Janet Napolitano could, according to one analysis recently presented before Congress, leave up to 90% of Americans dead. Without electricity America would be at a standstill: Despite warnings from private security firms and repeated intrusions by state sponsored hacking groups from Russia, Iran and China, the United States remains susceptible to a variety of different cyber attacks. Everything from military hardware systems and space agency satellites to public utility services have been attacked in recent years. The latest attack, believed to be orchestrated by a Russian-backed hacking group, shows that not only can these teams operate for months without being detected, but that they have already breached our networks and may have installed sleeper viruses that are simply waiting for commands to be executed on thousands of unsuspecting networks. Within the span of seconds and with the simple click of a mouse our entire national infrastructure could be rendered useless. You can read more from Mac Slavo at his site SHTFplan.com, where this first appeared. 