Sandworm Disrupts Power in Ukraine Using a Novel Attack Against Operational Technology

In late 2022, Mandiant responded to a disruptive cyber physical incident in which the Russia-linked threat actor Sandworm targeted a Ukrainian critical infrastructure organization. This incident was a multi-event cyber attack that leveraged a novel technique for impacting industrial control systems (ICS) / operational technology (OT). The actor first used OT-level living off the land (LotL) techniques to likely trip the victim’s substation circuit breakers, causing an unplanned power outage that coincided with mass missile strikes on critical infrastructure across Ukraine. Sandworm later