“These kinds of campaigns are running, even as we speak,” said Omer Schneider, co-founder of CyberX, a security outfit that helps companies monitor their networks and detect intrusions. Although ransomware attacks are frustrating and expensive for the business side, the bigger threat is an attack that could give adversaries control of electricity networks, he said.

Once inside a commercial network, attackers sometimes are able to download keystroke loggers and other malware that let them steal credentials conferring access to industrial control systems that operate physical equipment.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal here.