Posted on 06/07/2010 3:14:46 PM PDT by Qbert
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Spies hacked into the U.S. electric grid and left behind computer programs that would let them disrupt service, exposing potentially catastrophic vulnerabilities in key pieces of national infrastructure, a former U.S. government official said Wednesday. The intrusions were discovered after electric companies gave the government permission to audit their systems, the ex-official said. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
[Snip]
"The vulnerability may be bigger than we think," the official said, adding that the level of sophistication necessary to pull off such intrusions is so high that it is "almost without a doubt" done by state sponsors.
The Wall Street Journal, which reported the intrusions earlier, said officials believe the spies have not yet sought to damage the nation's electric grid, but that they likely would try in a war or another crisis.
Chinese and Russian officials have denied involvement in hacks on U.S. systems.
The malicious programs were probably purged immediately from the utilities' networks after their discovery.
Intrusions are generally much harder to detect than to clean up, though purging malicious programs from mission-critical systems poses a special challenge, since computers often have to be running around the clock and can't be shut down to be scrubbed clean. If that's the case, proper backups need to be in place to make sure an infection is fully neutralized.
The attacks highlight serious problems that utilities like power and water companies face as they add more technologies for remotely managing their facilities. Any system networked to the rest of the world—from financial systems to university records to retail operations—can leave openings for hackers.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Add this to an administration that has long touted the need for a new costly GE "smart grid" (and is weak on national security), and wants a reason to pass Cap and Trade by July 4...
August 2003......or did you really think that it was a lightening strike?
geez too bad we didnt have a spare $1.4 trillion laying around to upgrade our electric grid or something..
1. Destroy the country.
2. Blame Bush.
Spies? We have endless illegals, muslims and God knows what running around the USA. Unless the whole country goes Arizona and RINO scum like McCain get kicked outr then we are screwed.
Morons who watch TV have no idea how bad things are. Keep watching TV and paying $50 to 120 a month to the cable companies to be (pea)-brainwashed.
I am hearing that the military GPS failure 2 weeks ago was NOT due to a software upgrade but rather due to HACKING.
I think it’s possible that the “upgrade” talk was just a cover story.
Who thinks China won’t attack us this way?
“The vulnerability may be bigger than we think,” the official said, adding that the level of sophistication necessary to pull off such intrusions is so high that it is “almost without a doubt” done by state sponsors”
IOW, some 16 year old kid from the Phillipines could have done it, or the malware, which was easy to erase and detect, was not by incompetent utilities.
Translation: Don’t regulate us for our incompetence! It was spies, spies dammit! Special powers of a foreign state we could not have forseen! We hired a “former government official” to say it, that means it must be true!
I think I detect the subtle technological brilliance of the Amish at work here . . .
I had a difficult time swallowing that story of the tree branch in rural Ohio that caused theblack-out the whole NE US and parts of Canada a few years ago.
That was one mighty Oak or Elm.
//1,000 point “flash crash” in the stock market//
That one got my attention in the same way. We know the Chinese and the Norks have been working on hacking into our systems for a good while
Even a coordinated simultaneous attack on sub stations and transmission towers in various parts of the country especially during peak demand would likely bring down large parts of our electrical grid. With many of these facilities being unguarded or in rural areas such attacks could be easily done with crippling effects on our economy.
No; that wasn't hacking.....it was incompetence of the operators who were kept dumb by the corporate leadership there, to save money. The cost of the move by that particular company was to end up costing others (and all consumers) BILLIONS and the Congress stepping in to whitewash the facts in the report, and creating another Regulatory monstrosity to oversee "The Grid". Transporting electricity across boundaries of former service territories, on paper, is a simple method of financial trading. Electrons move acording to Kirchoff's Law, and Ohm's Law, neither of which can ever be repealed or amended via Congress. The purported sales and delivery of power from a point 1000 or more miles from the generator, over typical transmission systems, is an un-natural act....the electrons can't go that way when a generator was built and the transmission supporting it was to transport the power to a load center nearby.....it wasn't designed to pump power from California to New York, no matter who wants that to happen.
Yes; hackers could knock out large areas of power supply, but so could strategic placements of explosives at key transmission and generator sites. Unfortunately, as demonstrated in your example, the current crop of System Operators rely on the Computers to make decisions, and would be poorly prepared to operate through experience and operating knowledge as in the past. The retirements of veteran system operators and the regulations in place today will make a complete regional blackout a simple matter of knocking out a few systems' energy management systems, or even just disrupting their data communications....no matter what the regulators say.
I brought this to the attention of several responsible individuals in the organizations.
And was promptly ignored
I got the hell out. And focused on getting off the grid before the grid gets off me.
There was a major internet worm that appeared a few days before that caused the pc to reboot. It is assumed in most IT circles that the blackout was caused by the blaster worm.
power grid bump
China has trained for YEARS in asymetrical warfare; it is the cornerstone of any conflict with the US. Every major training manual identifies America as “the main enemy”.
Anyone who thinks we are not in a cold war, right now, with China is not paying attention. Bill Clinton’s real legacy? our next world war.
Nixon has some responsibility in it too.
LLS
I think what you say is very true. Simple dunderheadedness is probably the biggest threat we have to our electrical system, stock trading system, etc. The people who run these things often have no idea what they are doing and think nothing of plugging in their flashdrive into their workstation so they can play rogue or some such. They don’t take it seriously. Moreover engineers and programmers often build overly sophisticated systems thinking “everyone should know what I know and if they don’t, they can always pay me a maintenance fee.”
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