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... Lawler didn't believe it at first. LELWD provides electricity and water to the towns of Littleton and Boxborough, Massachusetts, which have a combined population of about 15,000 people.

"We don't have any access to large critical infrastructure. We don't own transmission. We're a distribution company. Yes, we're part of the overall grid, but the impact of taking out Littleton is small. You would never think that would be a target of any type of attack," Lawler told The Register.

The FBI agent told him that LELWD was one of 200 utilities on a list of organizations that had been breached. He asked Lawler to give his personal email address and said he would send over a link to click on and further diagnose the severity of the issue.

"It sounded like one of those Microsoft scams," Lawler said. He told the agent: "Go f-yourself, I'm not going to click on a link, you must think I'm an idiot. What is your name again?"

Then he hung up and called the FBI Boston office directly. The same agent answered his call, and this is when Lawler started to think it might be serious. But he still wasn't going to give out his personal information, so he told the FBI to show up at the utility the next Monday at 10 am.

"It was still surreal to me," he said. "You never think you are the victim of that type of attack."

Over the weekend, between family life and kids' sports games, Lawler mostly forgot about the incident " until Homeland Security officials showed up at the office Monday morning, and handed Lawler an unclassified document about Volt Typhoon. ...