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Staged Hack Causes Generator to Self-Destruct
An anonymous reader writes "It has been revealed that in a U.S. Department of Homeland Security exercise codenamed 'Aurora' conducted in March of this year, researchers were able to cause a power generator to self-destruct remotely via a hack which changed the operating cycle of the generator. 'Government sources said changes are being made to both computer software and physical hardware to protect power generating equipment. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it is conducting inspections to ensure all nuclear plants have made the fix. Industry experts also said the experiment shows large electric systems are vulnerable in ways not previously demonstrated.'"
because the automation system controlling the infrastructure is not connected to a public network, like say, the internet - right ?
If it is, then someone should probably do some quick patching asap.
Doolittle :
Bomb no.20 : To explode of course.
I don't understand why Nuclear power needed to be singled out. The electrical generators are pretty similar regardless of the fuel source. And if it blows up, it's not going to take the nuclear reactor / coal furnace / (insert steam source here) with it, since they tend to be very well separated from each other.
There's one problem with that: in today's world, data has to flow back to headquarters. Take an oil production facility for example. The plant has to send back a daily report detailing exactly how much gas/oil/water/CO2/H2S/sand/whatever is produced. Gas turbines send data back to the manufacturer for performance evaluation, maintenance scheduling, and troubleshooting. Yes, someone could do it manually, but there are myriad other functions that require network connectivity beyond the control system.
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
2. Complain about lack of funding to solve desperate hole in our nation's security.
3. ???
4. Profit!
These post are getting ridiculous. Too many people are saying "why don't they just disconnect it from the network?" and getting modded as "insightful".
It's NOT that simple! If they are connected to the network, there is probably a very good reason for it, and not just cause some engineer wants to check his email and download pr0n while listening to the generators hum.
These generators more than likely are controlled by self-optimizing systems based on a variety of data that is collected. If they're providing power to various remote sites, they need the internet for gathering data from those sites.
The internet is more than just a public free-for-all, it is the communication medium for many business/mission-critical systems (see LehiNephi's response above). They really just need to have the right security in place to keep it safe.
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
There are easier ways to damage the bulk power grid (or local transmission). Pick up a rifle at your nearest sporting goods store. Go to your nearest transmission substation (or even large generating plant). Take a shot at the porcelain on one of the transformer bushings. Kablam! You just removed a few hundred MW (or perhaps more) or generating capacity or transfer capability and caused millions of dollars in damage. If it's a generating station, the cost of lost revenue could drive the total to 70 or 80 million. Actually, I have seen bushings with bullet holes. Obviously not that common, or something would be done about it, but it does happen. It won't always cause an immediate and catastrophic failure, but it certainly can. Especially if one keeps trying... The bigger danger to this nations power grid is lack of investment and a severe brain drain in engineering personnel.
looks like a thrown rod, maybe they somehow cut off the supply of oil? I don't think the oil pump is usually under any kind of computer control though. ..maybe they over revved the engine and blew a piston that way. Keep the tach red lined long enough and something bad will happen. I don't know about a backfire, wouldn't a backfire cause a stall in the worst case? It looks like something mechanical broke inside the engine (that shudder) and then it slowly ground to a hault.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
As I've said before, it's all about money. There are almost irresistible forces that lead organizations to connect control systems to the Internet. An isolated private internet is extremely expensive and difficult to maintain. It's so much easier, cheaper, and tempting, to plug that cable into the public internet, perhaps with a crappy firewall to provide an illusion of security. Even if an engineer is willing to stick his neck out and say that it's an unacceptable security risk, he isn't being a team player and will be overruled by someone higher up the food chain.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
There is no such thing as an "operating cycle" to change for a generator.
/or human lives at stake, one invests more in safeguards such as electromechanical relays, breakers and other non digital gadgets.
The generator pictured in the video is not the kind used in large power plants. It appears to be a diesel generator similar to the kind that is used for backup power in many buildings. Backup generators are typically 1 MW or lesss, whereas big power plant generators are 1000 MW or more. It is like comparing a RC controlled model airplane with a 747. Besides being bigger, the 747 and the power plant will have much more elaborate systems to protect things from damage and destruction caused by malfunctioning equipment and/or misbehaving control systems. When there are billions of dollars and
The thing that could cause the generator to jump and destroy itself like in the video is to attempt to synchronize it with the grid out of phase or at the wrong speed. Another post in this thread, "This has happened before computer controls" by Maximum Prophet hit on the correct answer. In small, unattended, backup generators synchronization may be automated by computer, but in large power plants nobody trusts the computer enough to allow this critical operation to be automated. It is still typically done by hand with the aid of old fashioned non-digital equipment. Even if one did mis-synchronize a generator (and it does happen) other protective devices shut things down quickly to limit the scope of damage. And yes, mis-synchronization does happen in real life every once in a while, usually in a brand new installation and usually because the instruments are wired up wrong. The result can be damage sometimes, but I never heard of it destroying a whole plant.
That is not to say that cyberwar is not a threat, nor to say that it is not good policy to isolate all critical control computer from the net. Again its a matter of money. If you are running a $5 billion power plant, your budget is big enough to hire real people to come and maintain systems rather than using remote diagnostics. Or, if you do want remote diagnostics, you can afford to use leased private lines rather than the internet. Power plants and the power grid can afford gold standard security and they should be required to do it. I don't oppose the security thrust, but I do oppose the hyped up scare tactics designed to panic us into unwise government spending.
I spent most of my life modeling power plants and their control systems to build operator training simulators. As part of training, we inject myriads of simulated malfunctions. As part of debugging of the models, we get to see just about every detail of the plant and its control and its safeguards working incorrectly before we debug them and make them correct. That gave me and others experiences up to our chinny chin chins about what can go wrong and what the consequences might be.
I'm afraid that what this is about is another naked grab for government money and using scare tactics to get it. Mr. Joe Weiss in the video works for EPRI. He, and the government committee on critical infrastructure protection, were both singing the song in 1999 that no matter what Y2K bugs might exist, they couldn't do any real harm. Get it? Not that the Y2K bugs didn't exist or would be fixed (at proved to be the case) but that they couldn't do any substantial harm no matter what. Now these same people are saying that a few hacks can cause widespread and catastrophic damage. One can not argue both sides of this issue and keep credibility. If a control system misbehaves, it matters not whether the problem is inadvertent or malevolent. Yet these people pooh pooh the risk of inadvertent bugs yet hype the danger of malevolent ones. It's bunk.
EPRI wants $100 billion to automate everything in the power grid as a massive research project. Next they'll want another $250 billion to secure it from cyberwar threats. DOE wants a national DOE control center for the
Whatever the reason's given for connecting any critical infrastructure to the public Internet, it is far too risky of a proposition to seriously consider it. They absolutely should be using private WANs, preferably encrypted eight ways to Sunday.
There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for making this equipment accessable from the public Internet. None. Zero. Zilch.
Frame Relay T1 lines are cheap nowadays, and they should be using them.
Industry insider here. Here's a little something that'll make your day, slashbot #513215:
The "fight club" theory is exactly right.
Industry and utilities are more or less entirely windows based, and normally use whatever programming skills their existing engineer possess.
The reason you don't see a lot of "accident x causes by windows update" or "loss y caused by buggy VB program" is that:
a) Most everything "critical" to human or machine safety and security is protected by "dumb" failsafes and interlocks close to the hardware (ie. overflow valves, motion stops, fuses).
b) That's the cost of doing business "in the real world" to most people. They feel comfortable about a computer that only works 99.9% of the time; that's a nice mesoscopic reliability figure that isn't that much worse than many human or hardware factors.