EirGrid, which provides electricity to homes and businesses across Ireland and Northern Ireland, reportedly suffered a security breach in August 2017. According to a media report, during the attack on EirGrid's network, hackers gained access to the company's routers and set up a "virtual wire tap" man-in-the-middle on Vodafone's Direct Internet Access (DIA) service in Shotton, Wales. As a result, messages transferred between the power provider's Welsh and Northern Irish companies were intercepted by the hackers. The alert came soon after a secret warning from the FBI and US Department of Homeland Security to US firms, which warned that hackers were sending emails containing malicious Word documents to infect organisations with malware.