Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday that they had foiled an attack on a power company by a hacking unit with links to Russia’s largest military intelligence agency, an attempt that a cybersecurity company said aimed to cut power with a new version of malware used to do so in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, eight years ago.

Attacks on Ukraine’s power grid have been successful at least twice before — with a hack in 2015 leaving more than 225,000 people without power — and online attacks are increasingly used alongside traditional warfare. Just days before the Russian invasion began on February 24, Ukraine said it had suffered its biggest cyberattack, against its defence ministry, army and two big banks.

Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team said in a statement that hackers had planned on Friday to switch off some substations. It did not identify the targets or say how officials had stopped the attack. But the Ukrainians accused Sandworm, a Russian hacking unit that has been linked to the GRU.

The attack on the power company came in two steps, according to the statement: First, the hackers infiltrated computers in February or earlier; then, on Friday, they tried to schedule a power shut-off. Ukrainian investigators said in the statement that they had worked with Microsoft and ESET, a Slovak cybersecurity company.

(New York Times News Service)