Puerto Rico power Company was attacked, but Officials claim no customer data has been compromised
According to Reuters, the only electricity company in Puerto Rico, PREPA, said on Monday that the company had been hacked on the weekend, but customer information was not affected.
PREPA Executive Director Justo Gonzalez Torres said: “In these moments we are protecting the systems and working to resolve the situation.”
Torres emphasized that although the attack did make the service center less efficient in handling the business, the PREPA customer service system was not invaded. Therefore, the customer’s personal information is absolutely safe and there is no risk of leakage.
It is worth pointing out that the news of the Trump administration publicly accusing the Russian government of launching a cyber attack on the U.S. power grid was only reported on Thursday. Only a few days later, PREPA immediately issued such a news about the hackers.
This will undoubtedly make everyone feel that the attackers behind the PREPA incident seem to have some connection with the news announced by the Trump administration. However, as of late Monday, there was no clear evidence of any link between the Russian government’s hacking attacks and the PREPA.
When asked about possible sources of attacks, a PREPA spokesperson stated that the matter was under investigation and has been referred to the relevant authorities. However, the spokesperson declined to disclose who these so-called “authorities” specifically refer to.
In any case, this attack is undoubtedly a “slower” for PREPA. The company had filed for bankruptcy protection as early as last year to reduce its debt by 9 billion U.S. dollars. Only four months later, in September last year, Hurricane Maria almost destroyed the entire power grid in Puerto Rico. PREPA said after the disaster that repairing the destroyed infrastructure requires at least 4 billion U.S. dollars.
The Governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rossello, announced in January this year that he plans to privatize the assets of PREPA, which will take about 18 months to sell.
