The notorious hacking group, dubbed as Dragonfly 2.0, has hacked the operational networks of multiple energy companies, located in the U.S., Turkey and Switzerland.

According to the Symantec cyber security researchers, who have discovered the Dragonfly 2.0 campaign, the group “has the ability to sabotage or gain control of [energy companies’] systems should it decide to do so".

The experts also claim that the hackers have already gained a wide access to operational systems of Western energy firms. The control includes the ability to turn on or off breakers inside the companies' infrastructure and hijack systems that monitor the health of the grid.

So far, the Symantec security researchers did not link Dragonfly 2.0 to any specific country. However, several Russian- and French-language strings were found in the examined malware code.

The experts from Symantec have helped individual companies to restore the control over their systems. Moreover, to prevent future infections, the experts have provided guidelines  for the companies, that  can be use to tell if their networks have been compromised. The guidelines also include a list of several best practices for avoiding future compromises.