Posted on 10/19/2015 7:22:07 AM PDT by blam
Jeremy Bender
October 19, 2015
ISIS hackers are attempting to penetrate the US energy grid to carry out cyberattacks and take down parts of the country's energy supply, CNN Money reports.
The hackers, however, have so far proved to be inept.
Law-enforcement officials shared the information about attempted cyberattacks at a conference on October 14 with American energy firms about potential national-security issues.
"Strong intent. Thankfully, low capability," John Riggi, a section chief in the FBI's cyber division, told CNN about ISIS' hacking attempts.
"But the concern is that they'll buy that capability."
That concern is warranted, the FBI told CNN. Highly capable hacking software is available for purchase on the black market and could be used to hack networks associated with energy companies, fuel refineries, or water-pumping stations.
Because of the size and complexity of America's utility grids, and a lack of due diligence, US infrastructure is vulnerable to advanced cyberattacks — from terrorists or, more likely, from rival governments that already have the necessary capabilities. 'They'd love to do damage': The FBI says ISIS wants to go after one of America's biggest vulnerabilities
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
I have candles, some chow, and lots of ammo.
Obama is on this.
He’s getting Iran the nuke so we can have sunshine at midnight.
ping
</Recycled Soviet Union joke>
Well bringing in 200,000 of them ought to be mission accomplished.
When did they get the first clue?
Those defenses pop up regardless of what the government suggested it knew about or was protecting, taking advantage of a complicit press and a public with the attention span of a goldfish.
true, but perhaps not in quite the way you’d think. My guess is that it’ll take 10 years, but before long you’ll see the evil actually working for the electric companies. Many already work for the government, including the FBI and many have jobs with the Oil Companies.
So....it’ll be an inside job.
This is a top concern of Power (gas, oil, coal, nuclear) plant ICS SCADA security experts.
Control systems do not have the invulnerable air gap network protection.
Vendor, remote support access portals and accounts are on legacy systems that have little to none access management security and audit logging.
That’s just cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Physical security posture vulnerabilities are weak.
Grid critical transformers are wide open to coordinated physical attack from sniper attack. Transformer farms need to be shielded and invulnerable to attack.
Grid critical components have yet to be hardened against an EMP.
If Obama and politicians had any care for our country and her people, they’d address and lock this down.
It would be a big political win for whoever was the adult in the room to fix this.
They don’t have to in California.
PG&E is so bad, they have already accomplished the goal of never having reliable power. It’s like being in the Third World, except I’ve been to the Third World and the power is usually MORE reliable.
How about we kill them first?
Taking down the power grid, even if only for a few days, would be much more devastating than even the economic blow to the US as a nation which occurred subsequent to 9/11.
Then, most of the communications nationwide was still up, and people still had access to money and most forms of ground transportation. New York City was heavily impacted, but was back up and running almost within hours after the dust had begun to settle, as much of the infrastructure outside a few blocks within Manhattan was still largely intact, if vastly overstressed at that point.
Harden and decentralize the power grid. This is both economically feasible and technologically available.
The nationwide interlocking grid was “efficient”, but it was and still is highly vulnerable, as knocking out just one major node causes ripples up and down the grid which sets up a domino pattern - as the separate parts of the grid go offline, the surge starts tripping out the next part of the grid and the next.
The next part of the strategy is to set up much smaller “cells” only tangentially connected to a larger grid, so these cells can respond by cutting out before the surge coming down the grid causes a local overload.
Then, as originating power generation within each of these “cells”, build a sufficient number of thorium-fueled Molten Salt nuclear power plants, which DO NOT have the inherent danger of uranium-powered light-water reactors, both from runaway operation of the plant causing meltdown, and the resulting spread of radioactive contamination. This means these plants may be built near or within the concentrated power consumption centers, WITHOUT the need for long-distance high-voltage lines and greater interdependence on the grid.
We COULD do some or all of these things.
Or we could just go ahead and nuke most of the power centers throughout the Middle East.
That second option would certainly be the quickest to implement and would regain the respect and fear of America that enemies no longer have.
Actually I think the second option is the better option now. We have let things deteriorate too far for the time consuming first option.
They will probably seize control of some part of the grid then as the rest of the grid tries to compensate and reroute power to the affected area the area under their control will be used to create chaos in the rest of the uncontrolled grid and the grid will end up frying itself.
"I got this."
Want to be president? You get my vote.
Gee after todays incident in Britain.. do we need to guess that there might hav been an ISIS..or ISIL connection?
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