Does ISIS pose a threat to the electric grid?

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller told a packed room of utility executives as much on Thursday, during the last day of a two-day Nuclear Energy Assembly in Washington.

“I think we all know and understand that [the Islamic State] now has one of the most effective recruiting platforms on the Internet that we’ve seen,” Mueller said, giving the extremist group the ability to gain skilled hackers as part of a cyberattack wing.

The recent attack at the cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, “and others overseas are indicative of what is going to come in the future …, and my expectation is that … they would bring cyber criminals here and park them at a university or some place, and utilize them in a similar way,” he said. “Although because of the cyber realm, you don’t have to be in any one place. It’s much easier to hit somebody outside the jurisdiction of the United States.”

Mueller was FBI director through both of President George W. Bush’s terms and President Obama’s first term in office. He was responsible for initiating anti-terrorism investigations after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and charged the bureau to go after non-nation threats such as al Qaeda.

An attack by the Islamic State on the U.S. could be initiated by an operative sitting quietly in Amsterdam while hacking into the command and control center of a power utility or any other form of critical infrastructure.

Mueller said the group likely will strike a balance between attacks it can launch offshore using digital capabilities and information technology and those it can conduct with people on the ground in the United States.

The Islamic State is the biggest “hacker” threat, he added. “We have not seen the last of them.”

In an attempt to up the ante, retired Gen. Keith Alexander, the former head of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, warned that nations, as well as the Islamic State, are gearing up to attack the U.S. electric grid through cyber attacks.

What he suggested to remedy the situation is nothing short of “provocative.” Alexander said the Internet has provided “the greatest recruiting platform for ISIS. Why let them use the Internet? Why don’t we get together with our allies and say knock them off the Internet. Don’t give them that way of communicating.

“We ought to shut that down,” Alexander said. “And I think that’s something we can and should do.”

He said other nations are going to target the electric grid, energy systems and communication networks when facing a technically sophisticated adversary like the United States. He said adversaries such as Iran, Russia and others will “recon and position capabilities and networks that would give them access when they need it.”

What the government should be doing is figuring out a way to hack those networks, but “we don’t have a credible way of doing it,” Alexander said.

Tom Fanning, who runs Southern Co., one of the largest utility companies in the nation, said the utility industry is not positioned to take on the threats on its own and has joined the government in a public-private partnership.

“We are failing in every area,” Alexander said in his assessment of the utility industry. He said he has found companies are sharing information and discussing their concerns, “but that’s way behind where the answer is.”

The “rules of engagement” on how to respond to an attack “don’t yet exist,” he said.

In part, that’s a result of a cyber attack “not happening yet.” But “you don’t want a crisis to happen and then say shoot,” he said.

Fanning said companies don’t want anyone to know if they have been breached by an attacker. “It is the last thing anyone wants to say,” but it’s the worse thing the industry can do, Fanning said.

Mueller said that winter’s hack of Sony Entertainment illustrated the problem.

He said the U.S. should have immediately designated such an attack as a breach of national security, not a criminal justice issue. He said that is the debate that needs to happen.