MADRID: Spain and Portugal on Tuesday ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of a sweeping blackout that sparked chaos for millions of people across the Iberian Peninsula the previous day. Telephone, Internet and lights were working again, train services resumed, shops reopened and workers flocked back to offices following Monday’s outage that lasted up to 20 hours in some places.
No firm cause for the shutdown has yet emerged, although rumours had spread on social media about cyberattacks and an unusual “atmospheric phenomenon”.
“With the analysis that we have been able to carry out up to now, we can rule out a cybersecurity incident in the facilities” of Spanish grid operator Red Electrica (REE), said its director of operations, Eduardo Prieto.
Portuguese government spokesman Antonio Leitao Amaro said it had “no information linked to a cyberattack or hostile attack at this stage” after a preliminary analysis.
Portugal’s grid operator REN also denied on Tuesday it was behind a message circulated on social media attributing the blackout to a rare atmospheric event. The message in Portuguese said there was a “fault” in the Spanish electricity grid linked to “abnormal oscillations (that) were recorded in the very high-voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as ‘induced atmospheric vibration’”. — Reuters
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