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How Vulnerable Is Our Power Grid?
coreboarder writes "Recently it was divulged that the Brazilian power infrastructure was compromised by hackers. Then it was announced that it was apparently faulty equipment. A downplay to the global public or an honest clarification? Either way, it raises the question: how vulnerable are we, really? With winter and all its icy glory hurtling towards those of us in the northern hemisphere, how open are we to everything from terrorist threats to simple 'pay me or else' schemes?"
I have always believed that if something is networked, it can be subject to unauthorized access. I hope I am wrong.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Hijacking the power grid and forcing entire states to pay ransom or suffer brownouts? Such a thing has never happened before!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Star_(Business)
Suppose someone holds the nation's power grid hostage and then wants payment? So, why doesn't the government simply pay them, then track them down for assassination and release photos of their bullet ridden corpses? Would certainly discourage any copy-cat crimes. Somali pirates too.
Just a thought...
Speaking of Brazilian power failures, Brazil had another major power failure yesterday. Power from the Itaipu dam was cut off, which apparently put millions of people in the dark as it generates something like 14GW. Itaipu blames the Brazilian grid, meanwhile Brazilian officials aren't sure what it was, but are protesting any idea that it was sabotage/hacking. Paraguay and Uruguay also get power from Itaipu and were similarly affected.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/11/11/brazil.blackout/index.html
than the current local power monopolies? We are already in a "pay me or else" scheme which threatens lives and leaves us with this vulnerable infrastructure in the first place. And, unlike the "terrorists", the power companies have the cojones to stand before Congress and admit the control systems are vulnerable, the transmission grid is old and failing, the expected load in the next 15 years can't be handled and then claim its not their problem, its too expensive and the government needs to pay for it. As if they aren't taking enough on the front end from the consumer, they want more off the back end too.
Sickening.
I've been living in São Paulo for over 9 years. I was without electrical power for a few hours last night.
The timeline on this is pretty entertaining. On the 7th, there were a bunch of stories saying the 2007 blackouts in Brazil were caused by crackers (the articles say "hackers"). On the 9th, there were strong denials all around, accompanied by stories saying that no, the 2007 blackouts were caused by "sooty insulators." On the 10th, Brazil suffered a blackout much worse than the ones in 2007. That looks to me like crackers saying "sooty insulators? We'll show you sooty insulators!"
By the way, power failures are normally abrupt, but the one last night was not. I usually go from lights to no lights almost instantaneously, but last night, the lights were flickering for a while. After a few minutes, I thought it was going to stabilize, because my compact fluorescents stayed on while my UPS beeped a lot to tell me it wasn't getting enough juice. The larger fluorescents in the kitchen couldn't start, but the compact fluorescents gave me some light in the living room.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
I'm writing from the UK, so no matter what happens to *your* power grid, it won't affect *our* power grid.
Before you can get a sensible answer, you need to learn to ask a sensible question.
In any event, *your* power grid has already proven to be incredibly vulnerable to everything from single points of failure to social engineering for profit (Enron) so, quite frankly, worrying about the vulnerability of *your* power grid to hacking is like wondering about the vulnerability of a shiny new laptop left unattended on a car front seat to hacking... you have other issues to need to address first.
It is like wondering how vulnerable *your* road bridges and infrastructure are to hacking, while completely ignoring the fact that they are falling down by themselves due to lack of maintenance.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Actually it was Enron illegally manipulating the market which lead to the rolling blackouts. Notice they stopped shortly after the collapse of Enron and the arrest of those that hatched the schemes.
I read that link; appearly you think companies should be able to do whatever they want to public resources without restriction. I don't buy that nonsense, nor do I think corporations care about anything but squeezing money out of people. We allow them exist to serve a public good, not because they have any right to existence.
The "bribing" described in the article was Eddison trying to convience the local government that it would be worth it to install an electric grid. He proved to be right, but not every idea that comes along would pan out like that. The government is supposed to represent the people, and the people shouldn't have the roads they paid for torn up at the whim of a corporation, so the corporration (or Eddison) needs to convince OUR representives that there's something in it for us.
Please let me know from what nationality a poster to Slashdot actually believes his is the only one represented on this website..
We all make assumptions.
Speaking as a controls engineer for a major utility contractor, the control systems for power plants are completely isolated from the internet... it's common sense. There are security consultants out there feeding FUD to the public about the vulnerability of these control systems to viruses planted (either knowingly or unknowingly) by plant personnel. Well, if someone had intimate knowledge of the software AND close ties to the operators AND really thought that bringing down the plant would be a good way screw everyone over, despite the fact that when things go wrong, all valves and systems return to a fail-safe position, AND once the software was re-installed, everything is easily restarted...
Yeah, I guess it could happen. As far as the grid is concerned, I'm *guessing* that a lot of people were influenced by the same method of thinking.
Look, if anyone really wants bring down the power grid, we should be worried about a physical attack WAY more than an electronic one. I just can't conceive of how our systems are as vulnerable as people say they are.
I live in Rio Grande do Sul, in a region where we have smaller power dams that supply more than enough energy for us to keep running without Itaipu, and I must say it was quite interesting to follow everything from here in real time. I was chatting with a friend of mine from Rio de Janeiro, and we were about to play some Mario Kart online, when suddently she sends me an SMS in 22:14 telling me "You're not gonna believe it, but the entire city of Rio de Janeiro has no energy. Even the Cristo Redentor doesn't have any light, and I've never seen that happen in my entire life!". A few minutes later she comes back online using her notebook and a 3G modem, retwitted the infos I sent her to her friends, and following my suggestion took a couple of pictures of what she was (un)able to see.
I then called her and she proceeded to tell me about how chaotic things were on the streets, that basically the traffic was jammed, all buildings nearby had people locked inside elevators and she could hear the cries for help, and until 5 minutes after the blackout all cellphone lines were jammed too. I then kept following the news on portal websites and Twitter and reported back to her in real time to let her know what was happening and how big things where, although she had already contacted friends throughout the country and kind of knew the places that were online and the ones that weren't.
I must say it was quite an experience to follow things in real time and inform someone right there about it, and I guess she was "thrilled" about it too, even though she's afraid of the dark. :(
Here are the photos she managed to take:
- http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/1382/foto1jm.jpg
- http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/5272/foto2b.jpg
We have a military so politically correct that when faced with persons that give presentations to upper echelon staff with phrases like "We love death more than you love life", does nothing. End result: 12 people dead, more injured.
We have the TSA that is so fearful of "profiling" people so they feel they must hassle white grandmothers while letting young Muslim men proceed to test the boundaries of airline security.
We have police that do not wish to be accused of "profiling" in any way, so basically give a pass to illegal immigrants driving without licenses while stopping and ticketing others. This continues even in the face of significant numbers of accidents caused by such illegal immigrants.
While it might be illegal to defraud Americans in America, it clearly isn't when it is being done from places like Bulgaria. So we have US-based registrars setting up domains for people with names like "citibank-online.com" and "ebay-online.com" when the purchasor is in places where law enforcement isn't going to bother them. And then we poor Americans all cry about how bank security is so lax. Unfortunately, all of the protections that work in the real world aren't being applied online, so it is easy to steal from people without fear of any consequences.
Face it, we're due for some trouble. If thousands of people die because someone takes out the power grid for a week it isn't because security is lax - it is because the people that are paid to handle security are looking the other way. Intentionally. And no, unlike the guy on 60 minutes when thousands die it will not be a "wakeup call" and everything is magically fixed. It is going to take a lot more than that.
The question of grid vulnerability comes up again and again. Every time, it is treated as if the question was novel and never addressed before.
I work in the industry. My view is not that cyber security is being neglected. On the contrary, it seems more like the situation in the Grand Canyon where there were 30 anthropologists for every Indian being studies. Homeland Security and DOE Tiger teams and security auditors swarm like flies around the operations centers. Each of them looks forward to fame and fortune if they expose the one big unaddressed vulnerability.
The most recent fully public test of the grid's vulnerability was the Y2K scare. Many people, including renowned experts such as Capers Jones, figured that there would be no way the grid could survive Y2K without numerous incidents. The actual grid incident count on the night in question was zero. No hacker could conceivably create a more ubiquitous and more diverse cyber challenge to the grid than Y2K.
What about robustness and vulnerability to chains of failures? It is true that regional blackouts do occur. Every incident can be traced to a chain of failures. However, earthquakes, hurricanes and especially ice storms every year challenge the grids with multiple simultaneous failures; sometimes hundreds of thousands of simultaneous failures without triggering cascades. Do you really think that a hacker could think up something more challenging than an ice storm?
One thing not appreciated is the design criteria. The NERC criteria for blackouts is that blackouts affecting more than 10 million people should not happen more than once every 10 years. Using NYC as a benchmark, it was blacked out in 1965, 1977 and 2003.
The public, on the other hand, thinks erroneously that the grid should be infinitely reliable and that every regional level blackout represents an avoidable failure, and that each blackout reduces confidence in the system.
Ironically, people who live in places with frequent loss of electric service, such as India, adapt so well that it causes minimal disruption. It is a paradox that the more reliable electric supply, the less well prepared the public becomes for outages and the more neurotic they become over hypothetical threats.
You live in a delusion created by far right commentators. The TSA profiles (compare how often "suspicious looking" passengers get searched per trip vs white grandmas). The police profile (compare rates of "random searches" and imprisonment for minor offences by race and socio-economic status). Only focusing on "suspicious people" and leaving your honest wholesome law abiding white picket fence self alone only tells the bad people how to get past the gate keepers. There are Muslims of European descent. There are Muslims that can pass for Italian-Americans or Hispanic-Americans. Not to mention that exclusively harassing one group of people, a sub-set of who are criminals, only engenders favor and support for the criminals amongst them. Or the fact that militant Muslims weren't the first people to blow up planes, nor will they be the last.
Given the current tensions over Obama the next terrorist attack in America is likely to be another McVeigh. Possibly carried out by a white grandmother. Or it could be a college aged female animal liberationist who has decided that direct action is the answer.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion