The National Court investigates whether the great Blackout was due to a “cyber -terrorist” | Spain
The National Court has opened its investigations on Massive Blackout electric suffered from the Iberian peninsula this Monday. Through a resolution signed on Tuesday, the magistrate’s guard instructor, José Luis Calama, has given a green light to a cause to investigate whether the enormous energy crisis “could be an act of sabotage for computers in the Spanish critical infrastructures”, reported the Court. In his opinion, the judge admits that the cause of the ruling of the “is unknown” system in the “current moment”, but considers “necessary” to start his investigations to the possibility that it may be an attack of “cyber -ciclierroristic”.
Before knowing the public’s decision, Red Electric excluded that the blackout was motivated by a computer attack, a human error or by a strange time or an atmospheric phenomenon. For his part, during a subsequent public appearance, President Pedro Sánchez added that the government has no “conclusive information that was a terrorist attack”. Furthermore, although he did not want to exclude any hypothesis on the origin of the sentence, the chief of the executive asked for “tranquility” and prudence until the question was carefully studied.
“Time is necessary to have an accurate analysis and not to suffer these vulnerabilities again,” said Sánchez, who continued in this line: “The reforms will be made so that this does not happen again. We will ask for all the responsibilities to private operators”. The president has promised transparency and this will make the results of his investigation public.
On the other hand, justifying the opening of his own investigations, the judge Calama explains that “about 12.30” Monday “, the entire peninsular territory suffered an electric blackout”: “As reported by the government,” was lost suddenly, for five seconds, 15 GW of the energy that took place at that moment, which is equivalent to 60% of which it was not lost. These facts “have been a fundamental situation for the well -being and feeling of security of all citizens”, having “influenced the IT systems that support infrastructures that provide essential services to society, such as health, energy, industry, transport, etc.”.
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The magistrate of the instructor continues as follows: “While at the moment the cause of the aforementioned facts is unknown, the cyber -errorism is among the possible. Therefore, it is necessary to open a judicial investigation if these facts may be constitutive of a terrorism crime.” Therefore, Calama ordered Red Eléctric and the National Cryptological Center, dependent on CNI, to send two reports on the causes that motivated the blackout “, for which it gives them a ten -day” non -extendable “term. The judge also claimed another analysis of the head of the National Police information.
“Our company is increasingly based on a complex infrastructure system on which the production sectors, the management of services, the financial system and the development of the life of citizens in general are supported,” recalls the magistrate. “These infrastructures are interdependent with each other, which can trigger cascade safety problems through the system itself, with the possibility of causing unexpected and serious errors in the basic services for the population, as happened (this Monday). This type of infrastructure is particularly attractive for terrorism, due to serious damage that can be caused by the population”, says the judge.
In this sense, the Calamana instructor affects that the Cyber -Balce -Calce report of the National Cryptological Center has said that “the greatest danger is the attack with the origin in foreign states”: “This happened in the case of IT attacks on Ukrainian electricity companies that in 2016 caused a blackout, causing millions of people to finish electricity”.
