Up to three million Australian homes were minutes away from losing power after a major energy network was hit by a ransomware attack from hackers in November. Queensland’s CS Energy was subjected to a sustained ransomware attack on Nov. 27, in what the chief executive officer has described as a worryingly accelerating trend. The attack was only stopped at the last minute before it had the potential to shut down the company’s two thermal coal plants. Had the damage taken hold, it could have taken 35,000 megawatts of power out of the grid, leaving between 1.4 and three million homes in the dark. Even without reaching the generators, the attack was reportedly able to disable a number of the company’s corporate systems, with many employees being denied access to their emails. “CS Energy moved quickly to contain this incident by segregating the corporate network from other internal networks and enacting …