China and a few other countries have the potential to shut down the power 
grid and other utilities and infrastructure in the United States through cyberattacks, according to Michael Rogers, the head of the US National Security Agency (NSA).
While addressing the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee on Thursday, Rogers disclosed that a malware has been found by the agency and the malware is based in China. The malware has full potential to affect lives of common people as it would spread across U.S. systems. Rogers said digital attackers are on a boom these days and they are able to penetrate their critical systems and perform “reconnaissance” missions in order to get an idea about how the networks are assembled together.
He also showed his concern that how this access and this capability can be used by other nations, states, groups and individuals. Rogers also cautioned that China is not the only country which is the matter of worry, but there are some other too. He is frightened that the cyber attacks are able to expose the vulnerabilities in the technical system of the country to hackers and the miscreants will be able to take control of the entire system quite easily. They can even shut down distribution of water, fuel and electricity across the nation.
Rogers added that the hackers have been identified as stealing information on the configuration of systems and schematics of the control systems. The hackers are delving deep into the engineering details of the mechanisms to check the best possible vulnerabilities and how they can get access to the same. Rogers has also seen that multiple nations and states have been investing in these kinds of capabilities, though he declined to detail about the names of the other countries.
In defence, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said that his government is strictly against cyber hacking and his country has also remained a victim of such attacks, which usually originate from the U.S. Rogers heads the US Cyber Command and he also asked private companies to promote more machine-to-machine communication between them and the government to allow better protection, as per a report by PCWorld.
