New Reports Reinforce Cyberattack’s Role in Maduro Capture Blackout

US officials briefed on the January 3 extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro say the operation leveraged cyberattacks to trigger power outages and disable air defense radars, according to The New York Times.

Shortly after the world learned of Maduro’s capture, US President Donald Trump stated that “the lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have”.

While Trump didn’t explicitly mention a cyberattack, his comments were widely seen that way.

Robert Lee, CEO of industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos, noted at the time that from a technical standpoint the US could have caused a power outage and disrupted air defenses using a cyberattack on operational technology (OT) systems.

The ability of hackers to cause significant power outages was demonstrated in Ukraine in 2016 and 2017. The cybersecurity industry has long warned about the risks posed by hacker attacks to power grids, with ...