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CrashOverride malware is a Russian-linked ICS cyberweapon targeting power grids, SCADA systems, and utility networks; linked to Electrum/Sandworm, it threatens U.S. transmission and distribution with modular attacks and time-bomb payloads across critical infrastructure.

Key Points

A modular ICS malware linked to Russian actors that disrupts power grids via SCADA abuse and forced breaker outages.

✅ Targets breakers and substation devices to sustain outages

✅ Modular payloads adapt to ICS protocols and vendors

✅ Enables timed, multi-site attacks against transmission and distribution

Hackers allied with the Russian government have devised a cyberweapon that has the potential to be the most disruptive yet against electric systems that Americans depend on for daily life, according to U.S. researchers.

The malware, which researchers have dubbed CrashOverride, is known to have disrupted only one energy system — in Ukraine in December. In that incident, the hackers briefly shut down one-fifth of the electric power generated in Kiev.

But with modifications, it could be deployed against U.S. electric transmission and distribution systems to devastating effect, said Sergio Caltagirone, director of threat intelligence for Dragos, a cybersecurity firm that studied the malware and issued a recent report.

And Russian government hackers have shown their interest in targeting U.S. energy and other utility systems, with reports of suspected breaches at U.S. power plants in recent years, researchers said.

“It’s the culmination of over a decade of theory and attack scenarios,” Caltagirone warned. “It’s a game changer.”

The revelation comes as the U.S. government is investigating a wide-ranging, ambitious effort by the Russian government last year to disrupt the U.S. presidential election and influence its outcome, and has issued a condemnation of Russian power grid hacking as well. That campaign employed a variety of methods, including hacking hundreds of political and other organizations, and leveraging social media, U.S. officials said.

Dragos has named the group that created the new malware Electrum, and it has determined with high confidence that Electrum used the same computer systems as the hackers who attacked the Ukraine electric grid in 2015. That attack, which left 225,000 customers without power, was carried out by Russian government hackers, other U.S. researchers concluded. U.S. government officials have not officially attributed that attack to the Russian government, but some privately say they concur with the private-sector analysis.

“The same Russian group that targeted U.S. [industrial control] systems in 2014, including the Dragonfly campaign documented by Symantec, turned out the lights in Ukraine in 2015,” said John Hultquist, who analyzed both incidents while at iSight Partners, a cyber-intelligence firm now owned by FireEye, where he is director of intelligence analysis. Hultquist’s team had dubbed the group Sandworm.

“We believe that Sandworm is tied in some way to the Russian government — whether they’re contractors or actual government officials, we’re not sure,” he said. “We believe they are linked to the security services.”

Sandworm and Electrum may be the same group or two separate groups working within the same organization, but the forensic evidence shows they are related, said Robert M. Lee, chief executive of Dragos.

The Department of Homeland Security, which works with the owners of the nation’s critical infrastructure systems, did not respond to a request for comment Sunday.

Energy-sector experts said that the new malware is cause for concern, but that the industry is seeking to develop ways to disrupt attackers who breach their systems, including documented access to U.S. utility control rooms in prior incidents.

“U.S. utilities have been enhancing their cybersecurity, but attacker tools like this one pose a very real risk to reliable operation of power systems,” said Michael J. Assante, who worked at Idaho National Labs and is a former chief security officer of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, where he oversaw the rollout of industry cybersecurity standards.

CrashOverride is only the second instance of malware specifically tailored to disrupt or destroy industrial control systems. Stuxnet, the worm created by the United States and Israel to disrupt Iran’s nuclear capability, was an advanced military-grade weapon designed to affect centrifuges that enrich uranium.

In 2015, the Russians used malware to gain access to the power supply network in western Ukraine, but it was hackers at the keyboards who remotely manipulated the control systems to cause the blackout — not the malware itself, Hultquist said.

With CrashOverride, “what is particularly alarming . . . is that it is all part of a larger framework,” said Dan Gunter, a senior threat hunter for Dragos.

The malware is like a Swiss Army knife, where you flip open the tool you need and where different tools can be added to achieve different effects, Gunter said.

Theoretically, the malware can be modified to attack different types of industrial control systems, such as water and gas. However, the adversary has not demonstrated that level of sophistication, Lee said.

Still, the attackers probably had experts and resources available not only to develop the framework but also to test it, Gunter said. “This speaks to a larger effort often associated with nation-state or highly funded team operations.”

One of the most insidious tools in CrashOverride manipulates the settings on electric power control systems. It scans for critical components that operate circuit breakers and opens the circuit breakers, which stops the flow of electricity. It continues to keep them open even if a grid operator tries to close them, creating a sustained power outage.

The malware also has a “wiper” component that erases the software on the computer system that controls the circuit breakers, forcing the grid operator to revert to manual operations, which means driving to the substation to restore power.

With this malware, the attacker can target multiple locations with a “time bomb” functionality and set the malware to trigger simultaneously, Lee said. That could create outages in different areas at the same time.

The outages would last a few hours and probably not more than a couple of days, Lee said. That is because the U.S. electric industry has trained its operators to handle disruptions caused by large storms, alongside a renewed focus on protecting the grid in response to recent alerts. “They’re used to having to restore power with manual operations,” he said.

So although the malware is “a significant leap forward in tradecraft, it’s also not a doomsday scenario,” he said.

The malware samples were first obtained by ESET, a Slovakian research firm, which shared some of them with Dragos. ESET has dubbed the malware Industroyer.

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Electric Vehicle Market Growth accelerated as EV adoption hit 2 million in 2016, per IEA, led by China, Tesla momentum, policy incentives, charging infrastructure buildout, and diesel decline under Paris Agreement goals.

Key Points

EV adoption rose to 2 million in 2016, driven by policy, China, and charging buildout, yet still only 0.2% of cars.

✅ 2M EVs on roads in 2016; 60% YoY growth

✅ China led with >40% of global EV sales

✅ Policies target 30% share by 2030 via EVI

The number of electric vehicles on the road rocketed to 2 million in 2016 as the age of electric cars accelerates after being virtually non-existent just five years ago, according to the International Energy Agency.

Registered plug-in and battery-powered vehicles on roads worldwide rose 60% from the year before, according to the Global EV Outlook 2017 report from the Paris-based IEA. Despite the rapid growth, electric vehicles still represent just 0.2% of total light-duty vehicles even as U.S. EV sales continue to soar into 2024, suggesting a turning point.

“China was by far the largest electric car market, accounting for more than 40% of the electric cars sold in the world and more than double the amount sold in the United States,” the IEA wrote in the report published Wednesday. “It is undeniable that the current electric car market uptake is largely influenced by the policy environment.”

A multi government program called the Electric Vehicle Initiative on Thursday will set a goal for 30% market share for battery power cars, buses, trucks and vans by 2030, aligning with projections that driving electric cars within a decade could become commonplace, according to IEA. The 10 governments in the initiative include China, France, Germany, the UK and US.

India, which isn’t part of the group, said last month that it plans to sell only electric cars by the end of the next decade. Countries and cities are looking to electric vehicles to help tackle their air pollution problems.

In order to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the target set by the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change, the world will need 600 million electric vehicles by 2040, according to the IEA.

After struggling for consumer acceptance, Tesla Inc. has made electric vehicles cool and trendy, and is pushing into the mass market as the United States approaches a tipping point for mass adoption with the new Model 3 sedan.

Consumer interest and charging infrastructure, as well as declining demand for diesel cars in the wake of Volkswagen’s emissions scandal, has spurred massive investments in plug-in cars, and across Europe the share of electric cars grew during virus lockdown months, reinforcing this momentum. An electrical vehicle “cool factor” could spur sales to 450 million by 2035, according to BP chief economist Spencer Dale.

Volkswagen, the world’s largest automaker, plans to roll out four affordable electric vehicles in the coming years as part of a goal to sell more than 2 million battery-powered vehicles a year by 2025. Mercedes-Benz accelerated the introduction of ten new electric vehicles by three years to 2022 to take on Tesla as the dominance of the combustion engine gradually fades. 

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Ilorin Electricity Theft Device delivers remote monitoring and IoT-based detection for smart meters, identifying bypassed prepaid meters, triggering disconnects, and alerting the utility control room to curb distribution losses and energy theft.

Key Points

A prototype IoT system that detects electricity theft, enables remote disconnection, and alerts utility control rooms.

✅ Remote monitoring flags bypassed prepaid meters.

✅ Sends alerts to utility control room with customer details.

✅ Enables safe remote cut-off to reduce distribution losses.

The Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, University of Ilorin, has unveiled a prototype anti-theft device capable of remotely monitoring and detecting customers stealing electricity.

The Acting Head of the Department, Dr Mudathir Akorede told newsmen on Tuesday in Ilorin that the device could also cut off electricity supply to the premises of customers stealing electricity.

”This will simultaneously send a message to the utility control room, and in light of rising ransomware attacks targeting power systems, to alert the system operator with such customer’s details displayed on the control panel,” he said.

Akorede said that processes of filing application for patenting the invention, in line with emerging IoT security standards for the electricity sector, had commenced through the university’s Laboratory to Product Centre.

The don explained that the device was developed by himself and some students of the Department, reflecting how university teams contribute to innovations like generating electricity from falling snow in the field.

Akorede said, “I gave the project to my undergraduate students; they carried out the project to a level and I took it over and brought it to a level that was up to standard.”

The Don further said,”The invention is now up to the standard that it can be patented.

“I have brought this to the attention of the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company, although not officially, but if adopted, and as utilities pursue digitizing the grid strategies, the device would enable distribution companies to cut their commercial losses substantially.”

He said that the idea followed the discovery that most people use electricity without paying for it.

”A lot of people that have been able to get the prepaid meter, even though they can afford to pay their bills, still want to bypass this thing to steal electricity and this is not helping the companies.

“It is not helping all of us as a whole. If the industry should collapse, with emerging cyber weapons that can disrupt power grids underscoring systemic risks, everybody would bear the brunt of that problem and that is why the consumers too have to share out of the problem

“But this is not to say that distribution companies also do not have their share of the blame by not wanting to take on responsibilities such as faulty transformers.”

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Australian VRF Battery Market sees a commercial-scale solar and storage demonstration by Energy Made Clean, Sumitomo Electric, and TNG, integrating vanadium redox flow systems with microgrids for grid-scale renewable energy reliability across Australia.

Key Points

A growing sector deploying vanadium redox flow batteries for scalable, long-life energy storage across Australia.

✅ Commercial demo by EMC, Sumitomo Electric, and TNG

✅ Integrates solar PV with containerized VRF systems

✅ Targets microgrids and grid-scale renewable reliability

Carnegie Wave Energy’s 100 per cent owned subsidiary, Energy Made Clean, is set to develop and demonstrate a commercial-scale solar and battery storage plant in Australia, after entering into a joint venture targeting Australia’s vanadium redox flow (VRF) battery market.

Carnegie said on Tuesday that EMC had signed a memorandum of understanding with Japanese company Sumitomo Electric Industries and ASX-listed TNG Limited to assess the potential applications of VRF batteries through an initial joint energy storage demonstration project in Australia.

The deal builds on a June 2015 MOU between EMC and emerging strategic metals company TNG, to establish the feasibility of Vanadium Redox batteries. And it comes less than two months after Carnegie took full ownership of the Perth-based EMC, which has established itself as one of the Australia’s foremost micro-grid and battery storage businesses, reflecting momentum in areas such as green hydrogen microgrids internationally.

Energy Made Clean’s main role in the partnership will be to identify commercial project site opportunities, while also designing and supplying a compatible balance of plant – likely to include solar PV – to integrate with the VRF containerised system being supplied by Sumitomo.

The demonstration will be of commercial size, to best showcase Sumitomo’s technology, the companies said; with each party contributing to their core competencies, and subsequently cooperating on the marketing and sales of VRF batteries.

As we have noted on RE before, vanadium redox flow batteries are tipped to be one of the key players in the booming global energy storage market, alongside innovations like gravity storage investment, as more and more renewable energy sources are brought onto grids around the world.

The batteries are considered uniquely suited to on- and off-grid energy storage applications, and emerging models like vehicle-to-building power, due to their scalability and long asset lives, with deep and very high cycling capability.

Australia, as well as being a key market for battery storage uptake, has seen a recent grid rule change that could impact big batteries, and has been noted for its potential to become a top global producer of vanadium – a metal found in a range of mineral deposits.

A number of Australian companies are already active in the local vanadium redox flow battery market, including miner Australian Vanadium – which recently inked a deal with Germany battery maker Gildemeister Energy Storage to sell its CellCube range of VRF batteries – and Brisbane based battery maker Redflow.

Energy Made Clean CEO John Davidson said the signing of the MOU would bring key industry innovators together to help revolutionise the vanadium redox flow battery market in Australia.

“This strategic MoU represents a compelling three-way tie-up of an emerging miner, a manufacturer and an integrator to accelerate the development of a major new energy growth market,” Davidson said.  

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California Natural Gas Plant Rethink signals a shift toward clean energy, renewables, distributed solar, battery storage, and grid modernization as LADWP and regulators pause repowering plans amid an electricity oversupply and rising ratepayer costs.

Key Points

California pauses new gas plants to assess renewables, storage, and grid solutions for reliability.

✅ LADWP delays $2.2B gas repowers to study clean alternatives

✅ CEC weighs halting Oxnard plant amid grid oversupply

✅ Distributed solar, batteries, demand response boost reliability

California energy officials are, for the first time, rethinking plans to build expensive natural gas power plants in the face of an electricity glut and growing use of cleaner and cheaper energy alternatives.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power announced Tuesday that it has put a hold on a $2.2-billion plan to rebuild several old natural gas power plants while it studies clean energy alternatives to meet electricity demands. And the California Energy Commission may decide as early as Thursday to halt a natural gas project in Ventura County.

The scrutiny comes after an investigation found that the state is operating with an oversupply of electricity, driven largely by the construction of gas-fueled generating plants, leading to higher rates as regulators consider a rate overhaul to clean the grid. The state’s power plants are on track to be able to produce at least 21% more electricity than needed by 2020, according to the Times report.

Californians are footing a $40-billion annual bill while using less electricity, paying $6.8 billion more than they did in 2008 when power use in the state was at its all-time high. Electricity consumption has since fallen and remained largely flat.

Utilities in California have been on a years-long building binge, adding new natural gas plants even as the nation’s electricity system has undergone significant change, including consumer choice reforms that are reshaping the market.

Where utilities once delivered all electrical services from huge power plants along miles of transmission lines, the industry now must consider power delivered to the electric grid not only from its own sources, but also from solar systems and batteries at homes and businesses.

At the same time, utilities have been aggressively upgrading or rebuilding their aging natural gas plants — a move critics have said is unnecessary because consumers are using less power and clean energy technology is making those plants obsolete.

The DWP and energy commission moves involve as many as seven natural gas plant projects proposed for Southern California, despite warnings about a looming shortage if capacity is retired too fast, from Oxnard to Carlsbad, at a cost of more than $6 billion.

Reiko Kerr, the DWP’s senior assistant general manager of power systems, said given the changes in the energy world, the assessment is necessary to protect ratepayer dollars and the environment.

“The whole utility paradigm has shifted,” Kerr said in an interview. “We really are doing our ratepayers a disservice by not considering all viable options.

“We’re just looking at everything,” she said. “What can help us solve this reliability, renewable and greenhouse gas challenge that we all have?”

State and local governments have felt a heightened sense of urgency to deal with climate change after President Trump decided last week to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord.

California already has mandated that at least 50% of the state’s electricity come from clean energy sources by 2030. Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) wants to increase that to 100% by 2045.

Building or overhauling natural gas plants throughout Southern California, environmentalists argue, isn’t helping achieve those goals, even as some contend the state can't keep the lights on without gas during the transition.

The DWP’s move to delay plans for the fossil fuel plants, which seemed all but set to be built, came as a surprise to clean-energy advocates, who hailed the decision.

“This is a great first step toward smart energy investments that save customers money, ensure the lights stay on and protect our health and environment,” Graciela Geyer of the Sierra Club said.

The environmental group said that if the utility had moved ahead with the $2.2-billion investment in repowering natural gas plants, it “would have blown an irreparable hole in the city and the state’s hopes to achieve 100% generation” from clean energy sources.

Angela Johnson Meszaros, attorney at EarthJustice, said in a statement: "As our city struggles with the worst smog we’ve seen in years, we appreciate that LADWP is taking some much-needed time to reassess its plans to build fossil fuel power plants. We look forward to the day that LADWP announces that we are going to power our city with 100% clean energy.”

The gas-fired generating units slated for demolition and rebuilding are at the Scattergood, Haynes and Harbor electricity plants, which range from 34 to 67 years old.

As a group, the three plants have generated less than 20% of their combined capacity since 2001. The Harbor facility has operated on the low end at just 7%, while Haynes ran on the high end at 22%.

“The old model, the old legacy clunkers, won’t get us into the future we want,” DWP’s Kerr said.

DWP staff members told the utility’s’ commissioners Tuesday that their analysis of possible alternatives would be completed no later than early 2018.

Separately, the California Energy Commission this week is evaluating whether to halt a natural gas project in Ventura County after the state’s electric grid operator offered to conduct a study of clean energy alternatives to the roughly $250-million project on Mandalay Bay in Oxnard.

An energy commission committee has been deliberating since a hearing Monday during which Southern California Edison and the project’s developer, NRG Energy, argued that a study is simply a delay tactic that probably would kill a project needed to ensure reliable electric service and to avoid blackouts during peak demand.

The California Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s electric grid, told the energy commission that it would take three to four weeks to conduct its study on alternatives to the Oxnard natural gas project.

“Here we have an actual offer by the ISO to do such an analysis,” Ellison Folk, a lawyer representing the city of Oxnard, told the energy commission as she pushed for the study. “Its view that this is an analysis worth doing is something worth taking seriously.”

Energy commission members reviewing the study proposal are scheduled to meet again Thursday to consider the offer.

The board of governors for the California Independent System Operator made the unusual offer at its May 1 meeting to conduct a eleventh-hour study of clean-energy alternatives to building a new natural gas plant.

“If we’re going to be moving forward with a gas plant at this time, in this juncture, in the context of everything that’s going on, not evaluating other alternatives that are viable, noncombustion alternatives, is a missed opportunity,” Angelina Galetiva. a commission board member, said during the May 1 meeting.

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Renewable Energy Market Reform aligns solar and wind with modern grid pricing, tackling intermittency via batteries and demand response, stabilizing wholesale power prices, and enabling capacity markets to finance flexible supply for deep decarbonization.

Key Points

A market overhaul that integrates variable renewables, funds flexibility, and stabilizes grids as solar and wind grow.

✅ Dynamic pricing rewards flexibility and demand response

✅ Capacity markets finance reliability during intermittency

✅ Smart grids, storage, HV lines balance variable supply

ALMOST 150 years after photovoltaic cells and wind turbines were invented, they still generate only 7% of the world’s electricity. Yet something remarkable is happening. From being peripheral to the energy system just over a decade ago, they are now growing faster than any other energy source and their falling costs are making them competitive with fossil fuels. BP, an oil firm, expects renewables to account for half of the growth in global energy supply over the next 20 years. It is no longer far-fetched to think that the world is entering an era of clean, unlimited and cheap, abundant electricity for all. About time, too. 

There is a $20trn hitch, though. To get from here to there requires huge amounts of investment over the next few decades, to replace old smog-belching power plants and to upgrade the pylons and wires that bring electricity to consumers. Normally investors like putting their money into electricity because it offers reliable returns. Yet green energy has a dirty secret. The more it is deployed, the more it lowers the price of power from any source. That makes it hard to manage the transition to a carbon-free future, during which many generating technologies, clean and dirty, need to remain profitable if the lights are to stay on. Unless the market is fixed, subsidies to the industry will only grow.

Policymakers are already seeing this inconvenient truth as a reason to put the brakes on renewable energy. In parts of Europe and China, investment in renewables is slowing as subsidies are cut back, even as Europe’s electricity demand continues to rise. However, the solution is not less wind and solar. It is to rethink how the world prices clean energy in order to make better use of it.

Shock to the system

At its heart, the problem is that government-supported renewable energy has been imposed on a market designed in a different era. For much of the 20th century, electricity was made and moved by vertically integrated, state-controlled monopolies. From the 1980s onwards, many of these were broken up, privatised and liberalised, so that market forces could determine where best to invest. Today only about 6% of electricity users get their power from monopolies. Yet everywhere the pressure to decarbonise power supply has brought the state creeping back into markets. This is disruptive for three reasons. The first is the subsidy system itself. The other two are inherent to the nature of wind and solar: their intermittency and their very low running costs. All three help explain why power prices are low and public subsidies are addictive.

First, the splurge of public subsidy, of about $800bn since 2008, has distorted the market. It came about for noble reasons—to counter climate change and prime the pump for new, costly technologies, including wind turbines and solar panels. But subsidies hit just as electricity consumption in the rich world was stagnating because of growing energy efficiency and the financial crisis. The result was a glut of power-generating capacity that has slashed the revenues utilities earn from wholesale power markets and hence deterred investment.

Second, green power is intermittent. The vagaries of wind and sun—especially in countries without favourable weather—mean that turbines and solar panels generate electricity only part of the time. To keep power flowing, the system relies on conventional power plants, such as coal, gas or nuclear, to kick in when renewables falter. But because they are idle for long periods, they find it harder to attract private investors. So, to keep the lights on, they require public funds.

Everyone is affected by a third factor: renewable energy has negligible or zero marginal running costs—because the wind and the sun are free. In a market that prefers energy produced at the lowest short-term cost, wind and solar take business from providers that are more expensive to run, such as coal plants, depressing wholesale electricity prices, and hence revenues for all.

Get smart

The higher the penetration of renewables, the worse these problems get—especially in saturated markets. In Europe, which was first to feel the effects, utilities have suffered a “lost decade” of falling returns, stranded assets and corporate disruption. Last year, Germany’s two biggest electricity providers, E.ON and RWE, both split in two. In renewable-rich parts of America, power providers struggle to find investors for new plants, reflecting U.S. grid challenges that slow a full transition. Places with an abundance of wind, such as China, are curtailing wind farms to keep coal plants in business.

The corollary is that the electricity system is being re-regulated as investment goes chiefly to areas that benefit from public support. Paradoxically, that means the more states support renewables, the more they pay for conventional power plants, too, using “capacity payments” to alleviate intermittency. In effect, politicians rather than markets are once again deciding how to avoid blackouts. They often make mistakes: Germany’s support for cheap, dirty lignite caused emissions to rise, notwithstanding huge subsidies for renewables. Without a new approach the renewables revolution will stall.

The good news is that new technology can help fix the problem.  Digitalisation, smart meters and batteries are enabling companies and households to smooth out their demand—by doing some energy-intensive work at night, for example. This helps to cope with intermittent supply. Small, modular power plants, which are easy to flex up or down, are becoming more popular, as are high-voltage grids that can move excess power around the network more efficiently, aligning with common goals for electricity networks worldwide.

The bigger task is to redesign power markets to reflect the new need for flexible supply and demand. They should adjust prices more frequently, to reflect the fluctuations of the weather. At times of extreme scarcity, a high fixed price could kick in to prevent blackouts. Markets should reward those willing to use less electricity to balance the grid, just as they reward those who generate more of it. Bills could be structured to be higher or lower depending how strongly a customer wanted guaranteed power all the time—a bit like an insurance policy. In short, policymakers should be clear they have a problem and that the cause is not renewable energy, but the out-of-date system of electricity pricing. Then they should fix it.

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