Hundreds of Britain’s smallest power plants could remain at a higher risk to state-sponsored cyber-attacks until the 2030s despite a successful Iran-linked hack last month, it has emerged. Officials this week briefed energy bosses on the breach, which is understood to have shut an unnamed small gas power plant for four days last month, and put the industry on alert over the growing cyber threat facing energy infrastructure.

However, the government’s own plan to toughen the baseline cybersecurity standards for Britain’s smallest power generators will not be required until the end of 2030, raising concerns over “an unacceptable gamble with our national security”. Official government documents, published this month, call for the industry regulator, Ofgem, to lay out proposals for new baseline cyber resilience requirements for gas and electricity infrastructure by the end of 2027, ahead of implementing new standards by the end of 2030.

The Guardian understands that the hack has not altered this timeline. The new requirements would cover the type of small-scale gas plant which is understood to have been successfully attacked by the Iran-linked hackers in the weeks before the government set out its timeline for bolstering the sector’s cybersecurity standards.

Reports of the unprecedented cyber hack emerged as the Cabinet Office prepares to urge UK citizens to stock up on tinned food and bottled water to prepare for extreme weather events and potential attacks from hostile states. Calum Miller, the Lib Dems’ foreign affairs spokesperson, said: “Leaving hundreds of small power generators exposed to cyber threats until the 2030s is simply an unacceptable gamble with our national security.

” Britain has hundreds of small-scale, unmanned gas plants connected to local power grids which are typically idle for most of the year but can be used to ramp up generation when electricity supplies are squeezed. Although the outage had no impact on the electricity system, the attack has raised concerns about vulnerabilities in locally connected power infrastructure which is not required to meet the same security standards as large-scale power plants and transmission assets.

“The government should not have to wait for the lights to go out before taking the security of our energy infrastructure seriously,” Miller said. “They must immediately fast-track these regulations, not leave them until the 2030s. We mustn’t leave an open goal to hostile states at a time of heightened global threats.

” The government opened a consultation into the cyber resilience of power generators in March, after it introduced the cyber security and resilience bill to parliament late last year, with a warning that the UK now faces four nationally significant cyber-attacks every week.

Michael Shanks, the energy minister, said in the consultation that the UK “needs to keep pace with the current threat landscape”. An industry source familiar with the post-attack industry briefing confirmed reports, which first appeared in the Sunday Telegraph, that the plant was shut down for about four days in one the most successful cyber-attacks on UK energy infrastructure.

“We should use it as a warning rather than wait for an incident,” according to Rafael Narezzi, chief executive of Centrii, an energy cybersecurity specialist. “Across the UK energy system we have small, medium and large generation assets, increasingly connected through digital systems, remote access, third parties and operational technology.

This particular incident may not have had consequences for the wider grid, but the next one could be different.” “What concerns me about this incident is not necessarily the size of the power generator that was affected, but how many others may be out there,” Narezzi added.

“Attackers do not necessarily select their targets according to how many megawatts they generate. They look for vulnerabilities, trusted access and opportunities. “The UK has thousands of distributed assets increasingly contributing to how our energy system operates.

Individually, many may appear insignificant. Collectively, their resilience matters enormously.” A government spokesperson said: “The UK has a highly resilient energy system. We work closely with the energy sector to protect infrastructure and ensure the highest security standards.

“We are alive to growing cybersecurity threats, which is why we also committed to reviewing the cyber resilience requirement for the downstream gas and electricity sector and are driving this work forward through parliament,” they added. Ofgem was also contacted for comment.

António Guterres, UN Secretary-General "I condemn today's military escalation in the Middle East. The use of force by the United States & Israel against Iran, and the subsequent retaliation by Iran across the region, undermine international peace & security.

" Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO) "I am deeply concerned about the current situation in the ...

Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani is scheduled to visit Tehran to advance mediation efforts aimed at restoring normal navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, although no diplomatic breakthrough has been confirmed. This visit occurs amid ongoing tensions, with the U.

S. reporting Iranian violations of a ceasefire memorandum and the implementation of new economic sanctions, which Iran has characterized as unlawful.

Iran and Oman are still working on the details of an agreement on the Strait of Hormuz, a senior Iranian source said on Wednesday, after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the two countries had agreed how to share the waterway and its revenues. The elite force’s spokesperson, echoing Tehran’s official stance, also said the strait would not open unless the United States met Tehran’s conditions under an interim ceasefire agreement that was struck in June before unravelling.

Those conditions include an end to the US blockade on Iranian ports, compensation and removal of sanctions. Iran and Oman have held on-and-off talks for weeks about controlling traffic through the strait, which handled one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments before the war began in February.

Most shipping has since been shut down, driving global energy prices higher, as Tehran and Washington have tried to assert control over the channel, imposing separate blockades. “An agreement with Oman over the Strait of Hormuz has not been finalised,” the senior Iranian source said, adding that the talks were continuing on the details of an accord.

A spokesperson for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Iran and Oman had reached an agreement on their shares of the territory and revenues. “The Strait of Hormuz belongs to Iran and the country of Oman. We have been in negotiations with Oman for about a month, and we have reached results that are acceptable to both sides,” Hossein Mohebbi said in comments published by Iranian state media.

“In these negotiations, agreements have been reached regarding the share of each country in the waters of the Strait and the share of Iran and Oman in its revenues,” he added. It was not immediately clear at what stage of the negotiations the agreements had been reached.

Iran had said earlier this month that a deal on the strait was close. Following talks on Tuesday between Iran and Oman, Omani foreign minister Badr Albusaidi said he was “hopeful we will soon announce a temporary corridor for the Strait of Hormuz and practical arrangements to restore safe navigation”.

US president Donald Trump has warned Oman against co-operating with Iran, telling Fox News on August 17: “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.” The IRGC accused the US of seeking to obstruct Iran’s negotiations with Oman and said this had caused an agreement to be delayed.

“If the United States stops obstructing and returns to the agreement, we can open the Strait of Hormuz within the framework of the agreement reached. If the United States does not accept our conditions, the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened under any circumstances,” Mr Mohebbi said.

Though active hostilities between the US and Iran have largely subsided in recent weeks, diplomatic efforts to reach a peace deal have stalled, and continuing attacks on ships mean passage through the Strait of Hormuz remains perilous. Iran announced a blacklist on Sunday of 45 ships in an apparent effort to stop ship-to-ship transfers used by Gulf energy producers to evade the Iranian blockade.

Some companies plan to stop using vessels added to the blacklist, sources said. In an effort to tighten pressure on Iran’s economy, the US has threatened to punish countries that continue to do business with Iran, but said it would not impose penalties immediately.

The sanctions did not feature Chinese financial institutions suspected of facilitating oil exports from Iran that the US blockade has cut. Iran denounced the US effort to isolate its economy as an act of “gross lawlessness”, expressing confidence that many countries would not join the pressure campaign.

Oil prices fell for a third day, dropping more than 1.5pc, following signs of renewed efforts to seek a mediated end to the war that began on February 28 with US and Israeli strikes on Iran. Secretary of state Marco Rubio told allies that the US did not expect to launch new strikes against Iran for now, and would instead focus on other means of pressure, Axios reported on Tuesday.

US public approval of the war has fallen to its lowest level since the conflict’s early days, and Mr Trump’s popularity is likewise at a record low ahead of congressional elections in November, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. Thousands of people have died in the conflict, most of them in Iran and Lebanon, while the U.

S. and Israel have degraded much of Iran’s conventional military capacity. The exact state of its nuclear programme, which the US and Israel aim to dismantle, remains unknown. Iranian army spokesman brigadier general Mohammad Akrami-Nia said new equipment had been delivered to combat units and fighting against two technologically advanced militaries had provided Iran’s forces with significant battlefield experience, according to comments carried on Wednesday by Iran’s Mehr News.