US bomber at air base in Britain<\/p>\n
Iranian hackers shut down a British<\/a> power plant for four days in an unprecedented cyber attack, the Sunday Telegraph reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to the newspaper, the incident appears to mark the first time Iran-linked hackers have successfully shut down such a British facility.<\/p>\n The incident occurred alongside a series of attacks on US water infrastructure<\/a> last month,\u00a0which affected at least 12 states<\/a> and caused concern in the White House.<\/p>\n The Telegraph said that British officials have refused to disclose which facility was affected, citing security concerns.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the\u00a0Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said that the attack impacted a “small-scale energy generator”, posing no “risk to the wider energy system”.<\/p>\n No outages were reported following the incident, according to the\u00a0National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which deals with attacks on critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n The British government subsequently briefed chief executives of power companies and wrote to businesses with advice, direction and next steps.<\/p>\n The attack appears to mark an escalation following the UK’s decision to grant the US permission to launch “defensive operations” against Iran from British bases.<\/p>\n In March, Prime Minister Keir Starmer\u2019s government had granted permission to the US military <\/a>to use the Royal Air Force base in Fairford and the joint facility on Diego Garcia, for limited operations against Iranian missile facilities that “directly threatened British personnel”, regional allies, or sovereign assets.<\/p>\n The authorisation was subsequently expanded, allowing the US to launch strikes against active Iranian missile infrastructure targeting commercial oil shipping channels in the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n In June, an Iran-linked\u00a0hacker-activist group, Handala, claimed responsibility<\/a> for a cyber intrusion targeting water facilities in California, saying the action was carried out in retaliation for alleged US strikes on water infrastructure in southern Iran.<\/p>\n The group said it had obtained data from the systems and described the breach as a warning to Washington.<\/p>\n In a statement, Handala said it had the capability to disrupt water supplies but “stopped short of actually cutting off water to American cities”, citing a different ethical code than its adversaries.<\/p>\n The group also said it had published five gigabytes of data as evidence of the intrusion.<\/p>\n In April, the group\u00a0said it obtained at least 19,000 sensitive files after targeting the personal phone of former\u00a0Israeli<\/a>\u00a0army chief of staff, Herzi Halevi.<\/p>\n “All your top-secret facilities, crisis rooms, maps, and even the tiniest details of your command centres have long been like an open book to us,” the group said\u00a0in a statement posted on its website.<\/p>\n The files, some of which were seen by Middle East Eye, showed Halevi meeting with Arab officials.<\/p>\n In one undated photo taken in\u00a0Qatar<\/a>, Halevi could be seen attending a meeting with former US Central Command (Centcom) chief Michael Kurilla.<\/p>\nEscalation<\/strong><\/h2>\n