C0028: 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack
2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack was a Sandworm Team campaign during which they used BlackEnergy (specifically BlackEnergy3) and KillDisk to target and disrupt transmission and distribution substations within the Ukrainian power grid. This campaign was the first major public attack conducted against the Ukrainian power grid by Sandworm Team.
Security context for executives and security teams
C0028: 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack describes [2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack](https://attack.mitre.org/campaigns/C0028) was a [Sandworm Team](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0034) campaign during which they used [BlackEnergy](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0089) (specifically BlackEnergy3) and [KillDisk](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0607) to target and disrupt transmission and distribution substations within the Ukrainian power grid. This campaign was the first major public attack conducted against the Ukrainian power grid by Sandworm Team.
Executive priority
C0028: 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack is an official MITRE ATT&CK campaign. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.
Technical view
Security teams should validate C0028: 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (the mapped ATT&CK tactic context), supported platforms (the platforms named in the official object), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.
Likely telemetry
- Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
Detection direction
- Validate whether C0028: 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
- Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
- Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.
Mitigation priorities
- Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
- Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
- Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits
Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.
This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack
2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack was a Sandworm Team campaign during which they used BlackEnergy (specifically BlackEnergy3) and KillDisk to target and disrupt transmission and distribution substations within the Ukrainian power grid. This campaign was the first major public attack conducted against the Ukrainian power grid by Sandworm Team.
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
Techniques used
This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.
| Domain | ID | Name | Relationship / procedure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | T1566.001 | Spearphishing AttachmentSub-technique | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team obtained their initial foothold into many IT systems using Microsoft Office attachments delivered through phishing emails. CitationUkraine15 - EISAC - 201603 |
| Enterprise | T1112 | Modify Registry | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team modified in-registry Internet settings to lower internet security before launching `rundll32.exe`, which in-turn launches the malware and communicates with C2 servers over the Internet. [1]. |
| Enterprise | T1685 | Disable or Modify Tools | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team modified in-registry internet settings to lower internet security. [1] |
| Enterprise | T1070.004 | File DeletionSub-technique | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, vba_macro.exe deletes itself after `FONTCACHE.DAT`, `rundll32.exe`, and the associated .lnk file is delivered. [1] |
| Enterprise | T1018 | Remote System Discovery | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team remotely discovered systems over LAN connections. OT systems were visible from the IT network as well, giving adversaries the ability to discover operational assets. CitationCharles McLellan March 2016 |
| Enterprise | T1133 | External Remote Services | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team installed a modified Dropbear SSH client as the backdoor to target systems.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1105 | Ingress Tool Transfer | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team pushed additional malicious tools onto an infected system to steal user credentials, move laterally, and destroy data. [1] |
| Enterprise | T1204.002 | Malicious FileSub-technique | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team leveraged Microsoft Office attachments which contained malicious macros that were automatically executed once the user permitted them. CitationUkraine15 - EISAC - 201603 |
| Enterprise | T1078 | Valid Accounts | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used valid accounts on the corporate network to escalate privileges, move laterally, and establish persistence within the corporate network. CitationUkraine15 - EISAC - 201603 |
| Enterprise | T1040 | Network Sniffing | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used BlackEnergy’s network sniffer module to discover user credentials being sent over the network between the local LAN and the power grid’s industrial control systems. CitationCharles McLellan March 2016 |
| Enterprise | T1136.002 | Domain AccountSub-technique | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team created privileged domain accounts to be used for further exploitation and lateral movement. [1] |
| Enterprise | T1218.011 | Rundll32Sub-technique | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used a backdoor which could execute a supplied DLL using `rundll32.exe`. [1] |
| Enterprise | T1059.005 | Visual BasicSub-technique | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team installed a VBA script called `vba_macro.exe`. This macro dropped `FONTCACHE.DAT`, the primary BlackEnergy implant; `rundll32.exe`, for executing the malware; `NTUSER.log`, an empty file; and desktop.ini, the default file used to determine folder displays on Windows machines. [1] |
| Enterprise | T1071.001 | Web ProtocolsSub-technique | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used BlackEnergy to communicate between compromised hosts and their command-and-control servers via HTTP post requests. [1] |
| Enterprise | T1570 | Lateral Tool Transfer | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team moved their tools laterally within the corporate network and between the ICS and corporate network. [1] |
| Enterprise | T1056.001 | KeyloggingSub-technique | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team gathered account credentials via a BlackEnergy keylogger plugin. [1]CitationUkraine15 - EISAC - 201603 |
| Enterprise | T1055 | Process Injection | During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team loaded BlackEnergy into svchost.exe, which then launched iexplore.exe for their C2. [1] |
Groups, software, and campaigns
G0034: Sandworm Team
Sandworm Team is a destructive threat group that has been attributed to Russia's General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) Main Center for Special Technologies (GTsST) military unit 74455.[1][2] This group has been active since at least 2009.[3][4][5][6]
In October 2020, the US indicted six GRU Unit 74455 officers associated with Sandworm Team for the following cyber operations: the 2015 and 2016 attacks against Ukrainian electrical companies and government organizations, the 2017 worldwide NotPetya attack, targeting of the 2017 French presidential campaign, the 2018 Olympic Destroyer attack against the Winter Olympic Games, the 2018 operation against the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and attacks against the country of Georgia in 2018 and 2019.[1][2] Some of these were conducted with the assistance of GRU Unit 26165, which is also referred to as APT28.[7]
S0607: KillDisk
KillDisk is a disk-wiping tool designed to overwrite files with random data to render the OS unbootable. It was first observed as a component of BlackEnergy malware during cyber attacks against Ukraine in 2015. KillDisk has since evolved into stand-alone malware used by a variety of threat actors against additional targets in Europe and Latin America; in 2016 a ransomware component was also incorporated into some KillDisk variants.[1][2][3][4]
S0089: BlackEnergy
BlackEnergy is a malware toolkit that has been used by both criminal and APT actors. It dates back to at least 2007 and was originally designed to create botnets for use in conducting Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, but its use has evolved to support various plug-ins. It is well known for being used during the confrontation between Georgia and Russia in 2008, as well as in targeting Ukrainian institutions. Variants include BlackEnergy 2 and BlackEnergy 3. [1]
All related ATT&CK context
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates.
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.2 | 1.0 | Current bundle | e219a7700993… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Older bundle | b443ea37bb5c… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
- [1]Booz Allen Hamilton
Booz Allen Hamilton. (2016). When The Lights Went Out. Retrieved December 18, 2024.
Open source URL - [2]mitre-attackC0028Open source URL
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