Your explanation makes sense, but the inability to override what is basically manual system because of a computer network makes no sense to me.
This was a gas pipeline.
I’ve done security on oil pipelines in Iowa after the issues that occurred during the Dakota pipline fiasco. Pipeline ran under corn fields for miles, popped up at certain intervals at a valve and then went back underground for a few miles to another valve station.
Each station was “secured”, had a small shack with sensors and monitors to keep track of things.
This can be 100% traced to corporate retards saving a buck for favoring computers over people doing the job.....this can be traced to corporate retards that believe the young, liberal MBAs that promise them insane returns on investments and ignore everything you wrote about, who have no skin in the game and when things go to sh*t they just move onto the next job.
So the problem of going manual is this....not enough bodies to send to all of the control points along a pipeline. Some of those locations might be in terrain that’s tough to get too. Second problems is have enough laptops with the right software and necessary connection hardware to get into those control power nets on the pipeline. Somebody has to know what an RTU is and how to connect to it....and that’s not knowledge that everyone has.
Automation is very widespread in the energy sector and it’s only going to become more pervasive. If I can sit in a control center in Houston and control thousands of miles of pipeline and not have a body turning valves At all times of the day or night that saves money for the company. Most large energy companies have such control centers and the folks working in them are very skilled and knowledgeable. I know....I worked with them
There is no easy solution to combatting hacker attacks. And the feds don’t have the greatest it infrastructure. Some of their stuff is still running legacy software from the 60’s and 70’s. And the private sector pays way more than the feds for experienced cyber security people.
wrote on another thread that this country is going to see a catastrophic event caused by linking power companies to the power grid and other madness similar to the Colonial set-up.
Colonial should be required to divide their capacity among several individual systems with total and absolute separation between all work force and all control systems.
That would make it almost impossible for all fuel to be shut down at the same time.
Now that everyone has seen the danger of a huge system handling so much fuel, it is time to reduce the volume though the pipelines and build a trucking systen to transport the difference.
Gas is one thing - but think an electric grid hack. I think it would be much more devastating and harder as the manual controls you speak of are less in an electric grid.
I honestly think qaz that , thats how they got it back online....valve by valve. And thats probably why it took so long to get back online. Lack of personel and hundreds of miles and valves to open. But i think they also paid the ransom because all their other crap is online (i.e.payroll, financial)