The UK’s most dangerous nuclear site, Sellafield, has been hacked by cyber groups with close ties to Russia and China, The Guardian reports.
The British agency’s investigation has found that the startling revelation and its potential implications were consistently covered up by senior staff at the massive nuclear waste and decommissioning site.
The Guardian has found that authorities do not know exactly when IT systems were first compromised. But British media sources say the breaches were first discovered as early as 2015, when experts realized that dormant malware – software that could cloak itself and is used to spy on or attack systems.
It is not yet known if the malware has been removed. This could mean that some of Sellafield’s most sensitive activities, such as moving radioactive waste, monitoring hazardous material leaks and checking for fires, have been compromised.
Sources suggest foreign hackers are likely to have gained access to the highest levels of classified material at the site, which stretches 6 sq km along the Cumbria coast and is one of the most dangerous in the world.
The full extent of the data loss and ongoing risks to the systems are difficult to determine because Sellafield did not alert nuclear regulators for several years, the sources said.
The revelations were published in Nuclear Leaks, a year-long Guardian investigation into cyber-hacking, radioactive contamination and a toxic workplace culture at Sellafield.
The site has the largest plutonium stockpile on the planet and is a vast dumping ground for nuclear waste from weapons programs and decades of nuclear power generation.
Guarded by armed police, it also houses emergency planning documents to be used if the UK is attacked from abroad or faces a disaster. Built more than 70 years ago and formerly known as Windscale, during the Cold War it produced plutonium for nuclear weapons and received radioactive waste from other countries, including Italy and Sweden.
According to Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and security sources, last year Sellafield, which employs more than 11,000 people, was put into “special measures” because of persistent cyber security lapses.
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2023-12-04 19:33:00
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