Truss sent catastrophic warning as Russia can ‘turn off power’ and send UK ‘back to 1800s’

Liz Truss urges Russia to take 'path of diplomacy' in Lavrov meeting

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It comes as the Foreign Secretary heads to Moscow today in a bid to prevent a Russian attack on Ukraine. But harsh sanctions threatened by Ms Truss could be met with a brutal reply from Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Dan O’Dowd, founder of The Dawn Project. His warning comes after Ms Truss’ department was hacked this week, in a “serious cyber security incident”.

When asked if Moscow was responsible for the hack, Mr O’Dowd replied that it is “certainly possible”.

He added: “We know it is happening all the time. The Russian’s can do it, the Chinese can do it, the North Koreans, they all do it.

“They know exactly what your position is, they know your weaknesses, they know everything and they are listening to everything you do.”

Mr O’Dowd, a cyber security expert, warned that it could get a lot worse for the UK if conflict breaks out with Russia.

He said: “We have connected up the power grid to the Internet.

“All this data is collected about all the different sources of power and all the different users and it goes to some giant computer somewhere and optimises the system.

“But the problem is you put it on the Internet and how did you connect it to the internet? You probably downloaded software off the Internet that gives you Internet connectivity.

“But that software has tonnes of bugs in it. You can just go to hackers that and say that ‘I need to be able to hack this system’ and they would just do it.”

Mr O’Dowd warned that if cyber attackers were to get onto the system and get control of power stations, it would spell “total catastrophe”.

He added: “If you hack the power plant you could turn off the power and that would be bad.

“But what you can do when you gain control of a power plant is turn the generator past the red line. if you go past that point it would eventually meltdown..it will break.”

And he warned that if this happened, there might be no way to recover.

He said: “In the UK if you destroyed all the power plants what would happen? You would have no phone, you would have no internet..petrol stations wouldn’t work, you would just be stuck.

“No one would know what was going on, the supermarkets would be empty in a day, you’re living in 1820. That is a total catastrophe.

“If you get in and destroy the physical plants there is literally no recovering.”

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Back in 2017, the NHS was hacked in an attack that led to the cancellation of 19,000 appointments and operations which cost £92million.

A Whitehall source called the hack a “hugely sophisticated operation committed by a state actor”.

And in December 2020, health chiefs feared another ¬Russian cyber-attack harvested confidential patient data.

A “high severity” was then issued across the NHS network.

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the NHS “got lucky”, warning that a more sophisticated attack could wreak havoc.

The committee’s report came after a joint statement by the UK and US security chiefs warned Russian hackers were targetting millions of devices around the world.

Express.co.uk has contacted the Foreign Office for comment.

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