www.lesswrong.com/posts/zc5uhndCoxEKZvXoQ/electric-grid-cyberattack-an-ai-inform...
2 corrections found
caused a blackout in Kiev affecting 225,000 people for about one hour.
This sentence conflates Ukraine’s 2015 and 2016 grid attacks. The 2016 CRASHOVERRIDE/Industroyer incident in Kyiv blacked out only part of the city for about an hour; the ~230,000-person figure refers to the separate 2015 BlackEnergy outage.
Full reasoning
Public reporting from ESET and Dragos distinguishes two different Ukrainian grid incidents:
- 2015 BlackEnergy attack: ESET says BlackEnergy “triggered a 4-6 hour power outage for 230,000 people in Ukraine in 2015.”
- 2016 Industroyer/CRASHOVERRIDE attack: ESET says Industroyer “turned the lights off in parts of Kyiv in December 2016,” and Dragos says the 2016 incident “blacked out a portion of the city's electricity for about an hour.”
So the post’s wording combines the scale of the 2015 outage with the date/malware of the 2016 Kyiv incident. That makes the specific claim inaccurate.
3 sources
- Cybersecurity for the long haul: Protecting legacy OT systems
BlackEnergy ... triggered a 4-6 hour power outage for 230,000 people in Ukraine in 2015 ... and Industroyer ... caused a blackout in Kyiv in 2016.
- Electrum Threat Group | Dragos
In December 2016, in Kiev, Ukraine, a significant malware incident blacked out a portion of the city's electricity for about an hour.
- Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure: A story dating back further than you might think
Industroyer ... turned the lights off in parts of Kyiv in December 2016. Additionally, in December 2015, BlackEnergy operators interrupted power supplies for hundreds of thousands of people ...
for 600 households.
The cited FrostyGoop incident affected more than 600 apartment buildings, not 600 households. The post understates the scale by using the wrong unit.
Full reasoning
Dragos’s public reporting on FrostyGoop describes the January 2024 Ukraine incident as a two-day loss of heating to customers, and its 2025 OT/ICS report summary specifies the outage affected over 600 apartment buildings.
That is materially different from 600 households. An apartment building can contain many households, so the post understates the scope of the disruption and uses the wrong unit of impact.
2 sources
- Protect Against FrostyGoop ICS Malware | Dragos
CSSC ... shared details with Dragos about a disruptive cyber attack on a district energy company in Ukraine, which resulted in a two-day loss of heating to customers.
- Dragos Reports OT/ICS Cyber Threats Escalate Amid Geopolitical Conflicts and Increasing Ransomware Attacks
FrostyGoop ... caused heating outages for over 600 apartment buildings in Ukraine in January 2024.