Blackouts In Spain & Portugal Likely Caused By A Cyber Attack

Uploaded on 2025-04-29 in NEWS-Cybersecurity News, FREE TO VIEW, BUSINESS-Production-Utilities, BUSINESS-Production-Energy

A massive power outage struck the Iberian Peninsula on April 28, plunging millions of people into darkness as electricity supplies were suddenly cut across Spain and Portugal. According to Juanma Moreno, President of the Andalusian regional government, hostile activity by cyber criminals is the most likely cause of the blackout.

Portugal’s grid operator, RNA, offered an alternative explanation for the massive power outage when it It blamed a rare atmospheric phenomenon which caused "oscillations" and "vibrations" in high power lines, which in turn resulted in "synchronisation failures" across the national grid.

It is unclear how such oscillations might have affected power supply across Spain.

Around midday on Monday electrical systems of all kinds started to break down across both nations, affecting electrical power, telecoms and internet connectivity affecting emergency services across both countries - only the offshore islands were unaffected.

El Pais, the Spanish newspaper said, “the power outages have paralysed the normal operation of infrastructure, communications, roads, with widespread traffic light failures, train stations, airports, businesses, and buildings,” including incidents involving elevators.

The Portuguese newspaper, Correio da Manha, said that police have been sent out into the streets to help with traffic control in the absence of the usual infrastructure to keep vehicles moving. Vodafone blamed disruptions to its network across Portugal on the continuing electricity problems. Even he French Basque region neighbouring Spain is reported to have suffered “brief power cuts".

If this is the result of a cyber attack it will be the most significant attack of its kind since the 2015 and 2016 when widespread national blackouts were inflicted on Ukraine by Russian hackers, several years prior to the subsequent failed invasion.

While the exploit affected hundreds of homes in western Ukraine, this incident is affecting millions of people across the Iberian Peninsula and an attack of such wide ranging impact affecting major EU nations would be a challenging and complex operation, beyond the capabilities of all but the most skilled and well-resource nation-state threat groups.

The International Energy Agency recently warned that cyber attacks against utilities worldwide have more than doubled between 2020 and 2022 and while there have been some cases of undersea cables and even gas pipelines being severed in the past, these caused localised disruption, rather than affecting an entire nation.

Most previous attacks on energy infrastructure, including those in Ukraine, Estonia and the highly effective Stuxnet attack on nuclear facilities in Iran, have been blamed on nation state actors, although no nation has ever claimed responsibility.

ITVX | Cybersecurity News | Ars Technica | IEA

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