In an interview with the news agency, Stadtwerke Ettlingen’s Eberhard Oehler said that a simulated attack on the utility had revealed how easy it would be to hack into the energy company’s network through its IT grid.
Felix Lindner, head of IT security company Recurity Labs, who conducted the cyber attack in November 2014, said he gained access to Stadtwerke Ettlingen’s control room and could have “switched off everything: power, water and gas” for the town of Ettlingen, home to 40,000 people in the south of Germany.
Mr Oehler said: ”The experiment has shown that sensitive, critical infrastructure is not sufficiently protected.”
As more components of an energy company’s infrastructure come online, including smart meters, concerns are increasing about the vulnerability of hackers tapping into customer and utility data.