I full believe that most of the SCADA systems are not windows based machines and that the SCADA systems were not infected with the Blaster virus. Let's treat that as a given and not debate it. Let's also not debate windows, versus other OS.
However, (and this is why I posted the story) I think that lots of other computers used by the utilities for lots of things that help dispatchers, help operations folks, and are within substations operating things across the blackout out area were windows based and could have been infected with the Blaster virus.
Because I have done load flow analysis and multiple power system component failure analysis in the past, I feel that a weak area in most utility contingency planning has to do with "common mode" failures. It wouldn't take too many computers using a slowed down internet, or if infected with the Blaster virus and rebooting their heart out, to cause an truly unanticiapted common mode failure event that could lead to power grid conditions that were not anticipated.
Note that in the above, I didn't say that the infected computer was the utility SCADA computer. It could have been something connected to the utility's PBX telephone system that just slowed down the ability to talk to other dispatcers. The infected computer could have been somewhere else that just slowed down the connections between electric utility un-infected computers or it could have been something out in the field, like a bunch of smart meters or smart relays. It could even have been a number of PC's that engineers used to run something like a spreadsheet that calculated a value needed by a dispatcher during an abnormal switching event. BPA transmission remediation nomigraphs are usually posted as part of Excel files on the BPA OASIS site. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they are created on PC's that if infected by a virus could make it difficult to run a fresh set of transmission remediation nomigraphs that some dispatcher might feel he really needs before doing something drastic.
Again, the point is that it will take time for the true story of the east coast blackout to come out, but it is odd that the problems cascaded to so many systems as there are suppose to be protections in place to stop cascading blackouts.
Back to work for me
Hopefully, we will get the whole story of what happened before too long.