Hundreds of thousands of people in darkness, hospitals in chaos, a banking system under siege – a cyberattack on the US electricity grid could have catastrophic consequences.

When federal researchers discovered that outside hackers could take control of the generators used to produce electricity in the US and destroy them, analysts warned that a co-ordinated assault on the grid could blackout large regions and cause devastation akin to scores of hurricanes striking at once.

Regulators asked utilities to fix that design flaw, as they have with others discovered later.

This story was originally published on the Financial Times. Read the rest here.