NERC Releases Interim Report on Aug 14th Blackout

will writes "The North American Electric Reliability Council has released four documents concerning the August 14th power outage power outage in the North East. The blackout investigation homepage lists all NERC's documents relating to this event. Press coverage is at The Washington Post, CNN, and CBS News. The take home message: FirstEnergy did it. The are, of course, denying it." The report is also available at reports.energy.gov. Reader stinkydog writes "According to Yahoo News part of the blame for the big fizzle of 2003 lies with a failing SCADA system, GE's XA/21 power management system. 'Not only did the software that controls audible and visual alarms stop working at 2:14 p.m. EDT, but about a half hour later, two servers supporting the emergency system failed, too.' According to the product specs, it is a Unix system with X Windows."

Comments

X?

[Orien]

Can someone tell me what X windows has to do with this story?

Canada would like it's apology My Bloomberg

[ShieldWolf]

For blaming it on us when the real blame should fall on your countries move to self-regulation of the energy industry.

You can also apologize in advance for this :P

Re:Who cares about the OS or the provider?

[Ktulu_03]

True, but there was a Windows-only virus running around (MS Blaster) that would attack the DCOM port of a windows box. Its a possibility that this virus could have had something to do with the blackout, therefore the OS does matter in this case.

I agree with you though, any OS can be made in-secure by the user. But IMHO, not all OS's can be made secure by the user as well.