In late 2023, the general manager of a Massachusetts public utility company got a surprising phone call. It was an FBI agent, who told him that the Littleton Electric Light and Water Departments (LELWD) were being hacked.
Nick Lawler tells The Register that he initially thought it was a scam. But a notorious Chinese-state sponsored hacking group known as Volt Typhoon had indeed breached LELWD and was poking around its systems for over 300 days.
At the time, LELWD had been installing sensors from cybersecurity firm Dragos with the help of Department of Energy grants awarded by the American Public Power Association (APPA). ”The sensors helped LELWD confirm the extent of the malicious activity on the system and pinpoint when and where the attackers were going on the utility’s networks,” the APPA said last year.
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