SAO PAULO, Brazil — A massive 2007 electrical blackout in Brazil has been newly blamed on computer hackers, but was actually the result of a utility company’s negligent maintenance of high voltage insulators on two transmission lines. That’s according to reports from government regulators and others who investigated the incident for more than a year.

In a broadcast Sunday night, the CBS newsmagazine “60 minutes” cited unnamed sources in making the extraordinary claim that a two-day outage in the Atlantic state of Espirito Santo was triggered by hackers targeting a utility company’s control systems. The blackout affected 3 million people. Hackers also caused another, smaller blackout north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005, the network claimed.

Brazilian government officials disputed the report over the weekend, and Raphael Mandarino Jr., director of the Homeland Security Information and Communication Directorate, told the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo that he’s investigated the claims and found no evidence of hacker attacks, adding that Brazil’s electric control systems are not directly connected to the internet. Read the full story

SAO PAULO– Several major Brazilian cities including the two largest, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, were plunged into darkness Tuesday, witnesses said, in a blackout initially attributed to problems at a hydroelectric dam.

The power outage hit at 10:15 p.m. (0015 GMT Wednesday) and spread to the states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, including both their capitals, the states of Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo, in the southeast, Mato Grosso do Sul, in the southwest, parts of the central state of Goias, as well as the federal district of Brasilia.

The blackout reportedly affected large swaths of Brazil’s major cities in those states as well.

Globo television said National Electric System officials blamed the blackout on a domino effect in the country’s power grid from a power failure at the Itaipu hydroelectric plant that Brazil shares with Paraguay.

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Brazil’s 2 largest cities hit by blackouts

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s two largest cities have been hit by a massive blackout that has also affected other parts of Latin America’s largest nation.

Media reports say problems at a huge hydroelectric dam are to blame for the electrial outages affecting large parts of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and other cities in several states.

The G1 Web site of Globo TV says Brazil lost 17,000 megawatts of power after an unspecified problem happened at the Itaipu dam that straddles the border of Brazil and Paraguay.

Officials did not immediately comment on Tuesday’s outages. The blackouts came three days after CBS’s “60 Minutes” news program reported several past Brazilian power outages were caused by hackers. Brazilian officials played down the report.

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