Sandworm succeeded in planting a new version of the Industroyer malware to disrupt ICS infrastructure at multiple levels, but was thwarted from doing serious damage.

Ukraine’s Governmental Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) announced that Russia’s state-backed threat group Sandworm launched two waves of cyberattacks against an unnamed Ukrainian energy facility. The attackers tried to decommission several infrastructural components of the facility that span both IT and operational technology, including high-voltage substations, Windows computers, servers running Linux operating systems, and network equipment.

CERT-UA said that the initial compromise took place no later than February 2022, although it did not specify how the compromise occurred. Disconnection of electrical substations and decommissioning of the company’s infrastructure were scheduled for Friday evening, April 8, 2022, but “the implementation of the malicious plan” was prevented.

The Ukrainian team received help from both Microsoft and ESET in deflecting any significant fallout from the attacks. ESET issued a report presenting its analysis of the attacks, saying its collaboration with CERT-UA resulted in its discovery of a new variant of Industroyer malware, the same malware that the Sandworm group used to take down the power grid in Ukraine in 2016.

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