Spanish energy company Iberdrola has been hit by a major cyber-attack that has compromised the data of an estimated 1.3 million customers.

Among the multinational electricity utility’s subsidiaries is Scottish Power, which supplies electricity and gas to more than five million premises across the UK.

According to the company, it was hit by the attack on March 15th. The breach was stopped within a day and subsequent attempts to access Iberdrola’s systems failed.

“As soon as we became aware of the attack, the necessary measures were put in place to stop it immediately and prevent its repetition,” the company said in a statement sent to customers.

But before that, hackers were able to steal customer ID numbers, email addresses, phone numbers and home addresses in a major data breach. However, the company claims that no financial information, such as credit card numbers or bank details, were stolen.

Iberdrola has since warned customers that scammers may attempt to use the information as part of phishing attempts and has urged vigilance.

“If you have received the statement issued by the company, you must be vigilant and regularly monitor what information circulates on the Internet to detect if your private data is being used without your consent,” its statement added.

At present, there are no figures breaking down which of the company’s customers were affected by the breach, and whether these include any from its subsidiaries, including Scottish Power.

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March 15th saw several other cyber-attacks on Spanish institutions, including the Spanish parliament and the Cercanías rail network in Madrid. Though there is little evidence at present, reports that computers based in Siberia were involved in the parliament hack has fuelled speculation that there may be involvement by Russian nation state attackers.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, there has been speculation that the country may use its cyber expertise to launch cyber-attacks on Western countries in response to sanctions on the country.

While specific threats have been slow to materialise, or have simply not been detected, groups like the Scottish Business Resilience Centre (SBRC) have urged organisations to ensure they have robust cybersecurity practices in place.

However, the physical location of a computer is not indicative of the origin of the attack. For example, recent research found an increase in the number of attacks being launched from Chinese IP addresses in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Researchers noted that this only shows that threat actors, wherever they are based, are simply using Chinese IPs more frequently as a resource to launch cyber-attacks.

Currently, Spain’s National Cryptology Centre (CCN) is working to ascertain the origin of the Iberdrola cyber-attack.

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