The UK’s most damaging nuclear power plant has reportedly been hacked via Russia and China. It is believed that Sellafield was the victim of a cyber attack through equipment connected to both countries and was possibly covered up through senior officials.
Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, is a large multipurpose nuclear power station near Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England.
The Guardian found that authorities do not know exactly when Sellafield’s IT systems were first compromised, but breaches were detected around 2015.
Sellafield deny the claims, telling Express.co.uk their ‘monitoring systems are robust and we have a high degree of confidence that no such malware exists on our system’.
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Sleeper malware, a sneaky type of software, was reportedly discovered in Sellafield’s networks.
It’s unclear that the malware has been removed, raising considerations about critical activities such as controlling radioactive waste that have been compromised.
There is a possibility that foreign hackers accessed highly confidential data.
Because Sellafield obviously failed to report to nuclear regulators for years, it is difficult to determine the true extent of the loss of knowledge and the current dangers.
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The revelations are part of The Guardian’s year-long investigation into cyber hacking, radioactive contamination and the cultivation of poisonous paints at Sellafield, which has the world’s largest plutonium stockpile and a nuclear waste repository.
Built more than 70 years ago, it produced plutonium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War and accepted radioactive waste from other countries, including Italy and Sweden.
The Guardian also revealed that Sellafield, which has more than 11,000 employees, was subject to special measures last year due to ongoing cybersecurity issues, according to sources at the Nuclear Regulatory Authority (ONR) and security services. The watchdog is also preparing to sue the Americans. at Sellafield for those cybersecurity breaches.
A spokesperson for Sellafield Ltd said:
“We have no records or evidence to suggest that Sellafield Ltd networks have been successfully attacked by state-actors in the way described by the Guardian.
“Our surveillance systems are, and we are confident that there is no such malware on our system.
“This was shown to the Guardian long before it was published, along with rebuttals of other inaccuracies in its reporting.
“We have asked the Guardian to provide us with evidence similar to this alleged attack so that we can investigate, but they did not provide it to us.
“At Sellafield, we take cybersecurity incredibly seriously. All of our systems and servers have layers of protection.
“The critical networks that allow us to operate securely are isolated from our overall computing network, meaning that an attack on our computing formula would not allow us to penetrate them. “
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