Sellafield (UK) Nuclear Site System Breached Allegedly By Russian and China Hackers
UK’s nuclear site, Sellafield, has been under surveillance by some threat actors. As per reports, the exploit started as far back as 2015.
Experts said the malware the hackers used to monitor the site’s system was in the system during the start of the exploit.
Sellafield Denies Any Attack
However, Sellafield reportedly denied the claims. It restated that neither Russia nor China has access to its systems as none of their state-sponsored hackers breached the nuclear site.
They also claimed that their monitoring systems are robust and they have a high-level degree of certainty that no such deadly malware exists on our system.
In an attempt to degrade previous reports, it says, Sellafield confirmed well in advance to publishers, along with rebuttals to several other inaccuracies in their reporting. Additionally, they claimed they take cyber security extremely seriously. “All of our systems and servers have multiple layers of protection.”
Possible Critical Data Exploitation
The UK cyber authorities have cautioned for years that rival governments are targeting Critical National Infrastructure and logically Sellafield was a prime target.
However, Sellafield is not a functional part of the electricity grid so gaining access would be less advantageous to nation-state hackers. Irrefutably, the data at the nuclear site incorporates how and where the UK stores its nuclear materials could be useful for UK antagonists like China and Russia.
It’s worth noting that hacking into these kinds of targets is a key part of all national cyber espionage so possible that these attacks are happening all over the world from many countries including the UK.
More On the Nuclear Site
The UK government presently stores plutonium reserves and high-level radioactive scraps, including other hazardous materials in Sellafield.
Reportedly, it is home to several decommissioned old nuclear plants, redundant power stations, and reprocessing installations. The nuclear site has reportedly denied claims that its systems networks have been breached by hacking groups linked to Russia and China.
