LONDON: A power plant in the UK was forced offline after it was targeted by Iran-linked hackers.
It is thought to be the first such incident of a cyberattack by Tehran successfully shutting down a British facility of this nature, and marks an escalation after London gave the US permission to use UK regional military facilities in its war with Iran.
The attack, reportedly last month, was against a small-scale energy generator and posed no threat to the wider grid, the UK government said. The site went offline for four days, the Telegraph reported.
A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero 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.”
The CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre warned earlier this year that cyberattacks on British infrastructure are set to increase.
Richard Horne said the NCSC deals with at least four significant cyberattacks per week, and warned businesses to prepare themselves accordingly to avoid falling victim to such attacks, which could increase if the UK were to become embroiled in a wider military conflict.
GCHQ, the UK’s intelligence, security and cyber agency, has begun to develop plans for a pioneering national online shield mechanism using artificial intelligence to guard against cyberattacks. It is expected to come online within five years.
The plan was expedited after a particularly devastating attack on Jaguar Land Rover last year shut down production across various sites for over a month and cost almost £2 billion ($2.728 billion) in economic damage.
Iran has long been accused of utilizing cyber warfare against other states, including against Turkiye in 2015 which led to a massive power failure across the country, and against Israeli government websites in 2022.
The US government, meanwhile, said an Iranian-linked group called CyberAv3ngers ran a campaign in 2023 that successfully attacked at least 75 devices and facilities across various aspects of the country’s infrastructure.
Last month, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that “any base used for aggression against Iranian territory constitutes a legitimate target for our forces.”
This came as the UK’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham agreed to allow US forces to use British bases to launch offensive actions against Iran. His predecessor Keir Starmer only permitted their use by Washington for defensive purposes.
