Report: China, Russia Top Sources of Power Grid Probes

Last week, blogs and the mainstream press alike were abuzz with reports that Chinese and Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. power grid and left behind secret back doors. The original story, a piece in the Wall Street Journal, was light on details, and many readers have asked me if I uncovered additional nuggets of knowledge about the existence of these back doors. I have not. But I have discovered some interesting data published recently, which seems to support the notion that China and Russia are quite interested in locating digital control systems connected to our nation’s power grid and other complex critical infrastructures. The data comes from a white paper released late last month by Team Cymru, a group of researchers who try to discover who is behind Internet crime and why. That document sought to provide empirical evidence to show which nations were most active in probing our