Last Saturday night, a blackout in New York left the entire Manhattan area without electric power; interestingly, the incident occurred on the anniversary of the massive blackout that happened in 1977 that left the entire city without power, crippling traffic and all work, academic and domestic activities, network security specialists report.
Con Edison, one of the power provider companies
in New York, mentioned that the incident, which occurred Saturday at 16:47, was
caused by a transformer failure, although the full information will be known
until the investigation is completed; the electricity service was restored in
its entirety around midnight, local authorities mentioned.
In addition to the glare failures in the public
lighting, the blackout caused the closure of four New York subway stations
(Columbus Circle, Rockefeller Center, Hudson Yards and Fifth Avenue); according
to network security experts, train operators had to manually operate some
mechanisms to get passengers to the nearest station.
Due to the blackout, hundreds and hundreds of
people had to light their way home with the lanterns of their smartphones,
while in large residential buildings people had to use the stairs, as the
elevators did not work. In some parts of Manhattan, such as the neighborhood
known as Hells’ Kitchen, residents had to assist the police to direct traffic.
Although neither responsible authorities nor
companies have determined the exact cause of the incident, rumours were not
made to wait. According to network security specialists at the International
Institute of Cyber Security (IICS), some believe there could be a link between
this incident (and similar incidents) and the cyberwarfare that has begun
between the U.S. government and Iran.
Recently, the Iranian authorities claimed to
have dismantled a CIA-operated spy network that concluded with multiple arrests
of international spies conducting intelligence tasks in the Middle East. In
addition, it is known of the disruptive power of government-sponsored hacker
groups as, on previous occasions, hacking campaigns have been reported
targeting other governments’ power grids capable of massively disrupting energy
supply using sophisticated malware
variants. While there is still a long way to go for the investigations to
conclude, experts should not rule out any possibility.
