Replies

The person who actually did the control program for the pipeline could easily plant a few lines in the program to sabotage it. That person would probably have been a Russian, unless the programming were subcontracted to a foreign firm.

That would be possible, exactly as described.

But such software would only be "stolen" if they didn't pay the subcontractor.

But the kind of raw, unprogrammed software used to control a pipeline does nothing until someone adds the actual wiring addresses, and the actual control logic. Someone ahead of time couldn't program in a routine to do a pressure test, as described in the article, in advance of the actual program, as he couldn't know the actual addresses which would ultimately be used.

The sabotage has to be done by the software user. Or, as I suggested, you could design in a chip failure.

But in any case, pipeline design assumes chip failure, it assumes failure of the control system, because things like that happen all the time, anyway. So I could write a routine to sabotage a pipeline, but the damage would be limited if the mechanical design was done properly. In this case, it appears that the mechanical design was not properly done, or the construction was poorly done, or more likely both.

Soviet managers had difficulty in translating laboratory results to products, quality control was poor, and plants were badly organized. Cost accounting, even in the defense sector, was hopelessly inadequate. In computers and microelectronics, the Soviets trailed Western standards by more than a decade…formidable apparatus was set up for scientific espionage; the scale of this structure testified to its importance…proposed using the Farewell material to feed or play back the products sought by Line X, but these would come from our own sources and would have been ''improved," that is, designed so that on arrival in the Soviet Union they would appear genuine but would later fail…American industry helped in the preparation of items to be "marketed" to Line X. Contrived computer chips found their way into Soviet military equipment, flawed turbines were installed on a gas pipeline, and defective plans disrupted the output of chemical plants and a tractor factory.

http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/96unclass/farewell.htm

And then there’s the Bill Safire article on it:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/02/04/2003097438