Russian hacks into Ukraine power grids a sign of things to come for U.S.? by Holly Williams.

Last weekend, parts of the Ukrainian capitol Kiev went dark. It appears Russia has figured out how to crash a power grid with a click.

Last December, a similar attack occurred when nearly a quarter of a million people lost power in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine when it was targeted by a suspected Russian attack.

Vasyl Pemchuk is the electric control center manager, and said that when hackers took over their computers, all his workers could do was film it with their cell phones.

“It was illogical and chaotic,” he said. “It seemed like something in a Hollywood movie.”

The hackers sent emails with infected attachments to power company employees, stealing their login credentials and then taking control of the grid’s systems to cut the circuit breakers at nearly 60 substations. …

In Ukraine, they restarted the power in just hours. But an attack in the U.S. could leave people without electricity for days, or even weeks, according to experts. Because, ironically, America’s advanced, automated grid would be much harder to fix.

The Democrats haven’t got any evidence that the Russians hacked their emails (indeed, Wikileaks say the emails were given to them by a DNC insider), but isn’t it funny how the media are suddenly running a number of stories about Russian expertise at hacking? The story above is not a new sort of thing — it’s been going on for a while, as we reported in March.