Polish Power Plant Shut Down

Winds farms were not the only utility attacked this past December as a steam turbine and the process-water treatment system at a Polish combined heat and power (CHP) plant ended up shut down by attackers that gained entry via a private cellular network.
That attack came on the heels of the December Polish wind farm and large CHP plant hack, which destroyed equipment. A small CHP plant also fell victim to an attack and CERT Polska just released that information. The information on the attack became public during DEF CON in Las Vegas last week as Marcin Dudek, head of CERT Polska, presented details on the incident.
The plant in Poland supplies heat to 50,000 residents. The plant’s steam turbine and a water treatment system used to produce process water ended up shut down, interrupting the cogeneration process, in which electricity and heat generate simultaneously. Thanks to the prompt response of the CHP plant’s operators, the December 29 incident resulted only in a short-term outage and did not disrupt heat supplies to consumers.

Estimated Cost

Unknown at this time

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