"How DHS Fell Silent When A Hack Threatened The U.S. Power Grid"

"A month after hackers blacked out power in western Ukraine, a team of U.S. security experts touched down in Kiev to piece together the extraordinary assault.

Interviews, cellphone video evidence and a crash course in Soviet-era grid equipment helped the dozen or so Americans untangle the Dec. 23, 2015, cyberattack on three utilities. The investigators traveled thousands of miles with one big question in mind: Could the methods used to hack the Ukrainian power distributors, or the hidden code behind the strike, pose a threat to the U.S. electric grid?

But two days into the five-day mission, analysts working in an opaque intelligence aggregator at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reached their own conclusion. The Ukraine case did not pose any particular risk for U.S. systems, according to a Jan. 27 DHS memo marked 'For Official Use Only.'"

Blake Sobczak and Peter Behr report for EnergyWire July 19, 2016.