- Svenska kraftnät hit by ransomware; 280 GB of internal data allegedly stolen
- The power system remains unaffected; investigation into the data leak is underway
- The Everest group claimed responsibility; believed to be Russian-speaking, not state-supported
Svenska kraftnät, Sweden’s national grid operator, has confirmed that it has suffered a ransomware attack and data breach and is now being extorted for money.
In a brief statement posted on its website, the company said it was now investigating “to find out what information was leaked and how it may affect us.”
“We see no indication that the power system has been affected,” Cem Göcgören, head of information security at Svenska kraftnät, said in a machine-translated statement.
Everest
Svenska kraftnät is Sweden’s national grid operator, a government body responsible for maintaining and operating the country’s electricity transmission system.
“Our current assessment is that mission-critical systems have not been affected,” Göcgören said. “At this time, we are not commenting on perpetrators or motives until we have confirmed information.”
While it did not discuss who the threat actors were, what type of files they stole, or how much money they are demanding in return, The record found that a group called Everest had claimed responsibility on the dark web, saying it stole about 280GB of internal files, without going into any specific details.
Everest is a well-known ransomware organization, but it does not have an image of a dangerous group.
In fact, it became a laughing stock in the cybersecurity community after breaking into Mailchimp in 2024 when it stole such a small batch of company data (around 767MB of information).
Sharing their thoughts on social media, one person described the breach as affecting “like, a customer,” while the other commented that the breach was, “probably 300 milliseconds worth of mailchimp data. Probably a client of a client’s emails leaked.”
Everest is not a state-sponsored group, but since its members speak Russian, security researchers believe the group is located there.
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