Sweden blames Russian hackers for attempting ‘destructive’ cyberattack on thermal plant

The Swedish authorities said Russian government-linked hackers attempted to disrupt the operations astatine 1 of the country’s thermal powerfulness plants past year. Sweden said that, portion the hackers were unsuccessful, hybrid attacks that widen beyond cyberspace are becoming much dangerous.

Sweden’s curate of civilian defense, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, said during a property conference connected Wednesday that the attempted onslaught happened successful aboriginal 2025 and attributed the incidental to hackers with “connections to Russian quality and information services.”

“Pro-Russian groups that erstwhile carried retired denial-of-service attacks are present attempting destructive cyber attacks against organizations successful Europe,” said Bohlin, as quoted by Bloomberg.

Bohlin did not sanction the plant, but said the onslaught was blocked “due to a built-in extortion mechanism.” The curate said the cyberattack points to “riskier and much reckless behavior” connected the portion of the hackers.

A spokesperson for the Russian authorities did not respond to TechCrunch’s petition for comment. 

This is the latest known onslaught connected captious infrastructure linked to Russian hackers successful caller years, arsenic authorities hackers progressively people vigor and h2o systems with the purpose of causing real-world disruption to nationalist services. 

Before the onslaught connected Sweden, Russia was accused of attempting to bring down parts of Poland’s powerfulness grid successful December 2025. Earlier successful the year, Russian hackers concisely hijacked a dam successful Norway and opened floodgates that spilled millions of gallons of water earlier the hackers were expelled from its machine systems. 

A cyberattack connected a municipal vigor institution successful the occidental Ukrainian metropolis of Lviv successful aboriginal January 2024 resulted successful hundreds of apartments losing heat for 2 days amid freezing temperatures. Researchers said immoderate grounds pointed to the hackers operating from Russia, but that the attribution could not beryllium confirmed. 

Prior to the astir caller hacks, Russia was blamed for cyberattacks that caused wide disruption to Ukraine’s powerfulness grid successful 2015.