A power plant employee adjusts the wiring of a power unit in North Texas. The Texas energy sector has been increasingly probed for weaknesses by computer hackers from Russia, according to a cybersecurity expert whose company has monitored cyber threats in Texas.
Worst-case scenarios in Texas include hackers breaching the state’s power grid system and shutting off electricity to millions of Texans, seeking to halt shipments of oil and gas from sea ports, or breaking into a refinery’s network so it is unable to produce gasoline and other petroleum products. “Texas has some key export facilities for liquid natural gas — at a national security level, there are a couple sites that we all freak out about,” Lee said. “If you took down one site, you don’t get fuel exports out to certain countries.”
Russia is known globally in the cybersecurity world for having a top notch cyberattack operation. In 2021, Russian hackers breached computerized equipment that operates the largest fuel pipeline in the U.S., causing the Colonial Pipeline Company to shut down its pipeline, which originates in Houston, for six days to contain the attack. The breach triggered fuel shortages and a spike in gas prices on the East Coast.
“If parts of ERCOT go down, the whole grid could collapse,” Bronk said. “It’s a rickety ship, and we have ample evidence of the weaknesses.”“We take cybersecurity and the protection of the Texas grid and our state’s energy infrastructure very seriously,” a spokesperson for the Public Utility Commission of Texas said in an email.