14 DAY TRIAL // Speaking at the Cybertech 2016 Conference, Israel's Minister of Infrastructure, Energy and Water, Yuval Steinitz, told the crowd that the country's power grid was the target of a cyberattack that took place this past Monday, January 25.
"The virus was already identified and the right software was already prepared to neutralize it. We had to paralyze many of the computers of the Israeli Electricity Authority," said Mr. Steinitz, quoted by The Times of Israel.
Not a true cyberattack, just some run-of-the-mill ransomware
While Mr. Steinitz made it look like a targeted cyber-espionage campaign that involved spyware and other malicious trojans, Israeli tech site ynet (Google Translate link) got to the bottom of the incident and discovered it was only a ransomware infection.
The chances are that the people behind it were only after the money and did not specifically target Israel's electrical grid in any way or form.
We say this because of the recent Russian-linked cyberattacks against Ukraine's power grid that has everyone preparing for the cyber-apocalypse.
In the cyberattacks against the Ukraine, attackers used the BlackEnergy malware family to infiltrate the IT network of Ukraine's Prykarpattiaoblenergo, a local power supply company.
From there, the malware caused enough damage to bring some parts of the electrical network down around Christmas time. This incident was later followed by an attack on Ukraine's Boryspil Kiev international airport.
Israel's power grid was never in true danger
In the past, Israel has been the target of many cyber-espionage campaigns, most of which linked to various Middle-East countries, in most cases to Iran.
We don't need to mention the animosity between the Jewish population and most of the Arab world, but in this particular case, citizens of Israel can rest assured that their well-being was not put in danger.
Ransomware can't impact Israel's power grid enough to bring it down because it does not have the capabilities to do so. Most ransomware will at best lock down a computer by encrypting sensitive files. At government institutions, most of the data is backed up anyway, and in a power supply company, sensitive ICS/SCADA equipment can be decoupled from infected computers if necessary and controlled through another PC.
Israel's Electricity Authority did not report any downtime due to the "cyberattack."