The Swedish government said hackers linked to Russia tried to disrupt operations at one of the country’s thermal power plants last year. Sweden said that while the hackers were unsuccessful, hybrid attacks that extend beyond cyberspace are becoming more dangerous.
Sweden’s Minister of Civil Defense, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, said during a press conference on Wednesday that the attempted attack occurred in early 2025 and attributed the incident to hackers with “connections to Russian intelligence and security services.”
“Pro-Russian groups that once carried out denial-of-service attacks are now attempting devastating cyberattacks against organizations in Europe,” Bohlin said. as reported by Bloomberg.
Bohlin did not name the factory, but said the attack was blocked “due to a built-in protection mechanism.” The minister said the cyberattack shows “more dangerous and more reckless behavior” on the part of hackers.
A Russian government spokesman did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
This is the latest known attack on critical infrastructure linked to Russian hackers in recent years, as government hackers increasingly target energy and water systems with the aim of causing real-world disruptions to public services.
Before the attack in Sweden, Russia was accused of trying to destroy parts of Poland’s power grid in December 2025. Earlier in the year, Russian hackers briefly hijacked a dam in Norway and opened pillars that spilled millions of gallons of water before the hackers were expelled from its computer systems.
A cyber attack on a municipal energy company in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv in early January 2024 resulted in hundreds of apartments losing heat for two days amid freezing temperatures. Investigators said some evidence suggests the hackers are operating from Russia, but that attribution cannot be confirmed.
Before the most recent hacks, Russia was blamed for cyberattacks that caused a widespread outage in Ukraine’s power grid in 2015.
