Slashdot Mirror
Hearing Shows How 'Military-Style' Raid On Calif. Power Station Spooks U.S.
Lasrick writes "Interesting piece about April's physical attack on a power station near San Jose, California, that now looks like a dress rehearsal for future attacks: Quote: 'When U.S. officials warn about "attacks" on electric power facilities these days, the first thing that comes to mind is probably a computer hacker trying to shut the lights off in a city with malware. But a more traditional attack on a power station in California has U.S. officials puzzled and worried about the physical security of the the electrical grid--from attackers who come in with guns blazing.'"
First, unless I got the wrong link it's no surprise the video didn't help further the investigation. All you see on it are some flashes of light that are sparks and/or muzzle flashes, and maybe some shadowy figures. Oh wait, I just need to zoom in and keep hitting "enhance" and I'll get their faces.
Second, at the end of TFA they compare the cost of armoring transformers at one station with the entire cyber-security budget. How about an apples-to-apples comparison, like, you know... one involving the cost of armoring transformers at all the stations?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
[Puts candles on grocery list]
But if I were, I wouldn't run a test of my method using live fire to get my target all forewarned.
.30-06 and hole a few transformers just to watch the man overreact.
But if I were a bored teenager who thinks he is an anarchist, I could go out one night with my
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
It's just that thin veneer of civilization. A determined force can cripple the infrastructure, up close and personal, in pretty short order. You simply cannot secure all the infrastructure in this country. There are people who do little more than train themselves on methods to destroy stuff, and to kill people. Most nations maintain armies of men and women dedicated to that purpose. It shouldn't be surprising that not all people with a destructive bent are in the military.
It is noteworthy that only two men were involved here. A squad, or a platoon, or a company of men with a mission could really wreak havoc. At least these guys weren't intent on gaining physical access to a generating plant, where they may have killed any number of people.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Good job guys
Damn, now I gotta RTFA.
Here is a quick summary: Someone with a rifle can cause damage to infrastructure. Although in practice, this almost never happens, we should nonetheless pretend it is a real problem, identify all the millions of potential rifle targets, and spend billions to make them all bulletproof.
We've known the US has crappy infrastructure since, well, as close to forever as matters in America.
Attacks on a power station or substation would be immaterial if the grid was a grid, redundancy was built into the system, and getting things done was a higher priority than ego strokes and profit margins. (Yeah, heresy, I know.)
The moment you deliberately create single points of failure is the moment you hand out invites to nutcases, lunatics, wannabe cowboys and the rest of the US security infrastructure*. The moment you make such violence nothing more than a public nuisance, something not even worth a writeup in the local paper, is the moment it stops being interesting for the fringe groups to do.
*Yes, the local crackhead with the M16 and armoured personnel carrier is the "militia" the Constitution speaketh of. They are part of the national defence system. Due to two major wars inflicting a massive drain on reserves and an exceptional loss of forces due to PTSD and injuries, said crackheads form an increasingly large part of the regular forces, police and intelligence services. Frankly, I'd be far more concerned about a coup from within than a bunch of moonshine-laden rednecks who have watched too many Dukes of Hazard episodes.
Of course, given the NSA can dictate terms to the President, Congress and Federal judges, the coup might have already happened. Would you notice if it had? Would you care?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Building cinder-block walls around transformers in the transmission power grid might not be a bad idea. Cheap, and if concrete-filled, will stop most ammo. After a decade of anti-terrorism hype, it's surprising this hasn't been done yet. Most anti-terrorism studies of electric power grids mention transformers in the transmission system as a vulnerable point. It's not necessary to heavily protect the whole switchyard. Switchgear is easier and cheaper to replace than transformers, and less vulnerable. The transformers occupy only a small fraction of substation area.
Transformer substations are something that people, even in the utility industry, don't think about much. They're very reliable, need little attention, and are usually unmanned. So they tend to be ignored unless there's a problem.
It's embarrassing that PG&E has such poor surveillance of a major substation. The video, grainy analog black and white with slow VHS-type artifacts, means they haven't upgraded since the 1980s or 1990s. It's not like color HD cameras are expensive any more.
I just RTFA'd. Scared the hell out of me when I considered the ramifications of a co-ordinated attack,
good then they achieved there goal lets remove more civil liberties while your still scared for something absurdly unlikely to actually happen
If so, it might backfire. The NSA weren't able to prevent the attack, and if law enforcement are baffled then clearly the NSA have nothing that can identify the attackers. One genuine attack and one possible attack, nothing the existing system could do before, during or after. Fifty claims about things the NSA freely admit were fiction - well, those remain fiction.
Fifty claims that can be legitimately called false positives and one, maybe two false negatives. If you were running a company and one of your employees screwed up major decisions 51-52 times in succession, you'd probably fire them. From a canon on the top floor.
In this case, I'd argue the intelligence services and crime units have proven themselves unfit for purpose, and that the power company is too negligent on providing robust, fault-tolerant services and should have their business license withdrawn.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You simply cannot secure all the infrastructure in this country.
I dunno...rather than just roll over and play dead on this one, let's spend a trillion dollars on a pilot program and find out. ;-)
Several teams of terrorists hijacked four different planes on the same day, and that was when the internet wasn't even really involved. It's only a matter of time before somebody organizes a hostile flash mob, though I doubt something as intelligent as utility infrastructure will be the first target. It will probably be some political flashpoint.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
>Who the fuck made you judge, jury, and executioner?
The guy who is continuing to use deadly force within my sphere of influence. Or are you one of those people that feel that paying your taxes to fund the police (whose job is explicitly to reduce crime, not protect individuals) gives you complete moral amnesty to the implications of walking away from a rape/mugging/etc in progress?
Or maybe you think we should sit down and talk to the guy firing an assault rifle over a nice cup of tea? Sure I'd prefer to live in that universe too, but back in reality... ... and of course now that I actually skim TFA in this particular case it sounds like things are a lot less clear cut - a potential sabotage operation rather than the Military-style raid touted in the headline, which makes alerting the proper authorities and, if you're feeling lucky, perhaps monitoring or restraining the suspects a much more justifiable course of action.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I just RTFA'd. Scared the hell out of me when I considered the ramifications of a co-ordinated attack,
I remember reading an article about this sort of doomsday scenario back in the 80s. You don't even need a big army to attack these substations/etc. All you need is some guys with rifles to hit a whole bunch at the same time. Just shoot the insulators on the high-voltage lines and watch the whole thing go up in a shower of sparks. If you want to use 50 cal rifles and shoot up the transformers you could of course do so - the last time I drove past a substation they didn't exactly have guards on ready alert, so you could take shots at the thing for half an hour before the police showed up most likely.
For the billions of dollars we spend on bombers you'd think that somebody could stockpile a bunch of spare transformers and standardize the substation designs.
We should especially be wary of Congressmen who think that one or two people with rifles constitute "an unprecedented and sophisticated attack on an electric grid substation with military-style weapons" and chairmen of major regulatory bodies who believe someone 'could get 200 yards away with a .22 rifle and take the whole thing out (referring to said substation or similar infrastructure).
We should be especially wary of such 'public servants' who basically want to keep the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt going strong in the American public. Such people tend not to be interested in solving the problem (and it is a problem, just not the End of Civilization) in a rational and effective fashion. Such people are more interested in creating an environment that justifies overarching 'solutions' that expand the bottom line of certain companies and / or institutions that these blowhards are inevitably associated with.
Follow the money, follow the fear.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And the long history of eventual rampant abuses of authority by pretty much every government, ever, shows that the authorities cannot be trusted as the sole bearers of the tools of violence.
So we have a bit of a conundrum on our hands. As ever the question is "What price, freedom?" Our ancestors have time and again joined their children in fighting off oppression, and time and again they have died by the thousands to do so. And certainly anyone who has been paying attention can't deny that there have been some very worrying trends in government as of late - is now really the time to discuss disarming ourselves? How about we hold off on the discussion until we get our government back under our control again?
The real question is how many children's lives is it worth to give the rest a fighting chance the next time we must take our masters by the throat and force them to grant us a measure of respect? Because whether it's tomorrow or a few centuries from now that day is coming, and a lot of our children will die. The choice is only if it's mostly dribs and drabs today due to pointless accidents and acts of violence, or in great waves of massacre when they can no longer endure the lash upon their back and have no effective way to resist.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The intruder(s) then fired more than 100 rounds from what two officials described as a high-powered rifle at several transformers in the facility.
That's not possible. Someone must be lying. I know this because California banned all those evil high powered rifles.
I once saw an offer to tour a nuclear power plant. I thought that would be fun, I never saw the inside of a nuclear power plant before. I imagined it would be much like the coal fired plants I toured, I doubted I'd get near anything even remotely radioactive, but I still thought it would be quite interesting and educational. I then read the fine print on the tour invite. To go on the tour I'd have to submit to a background check, I believe that included getting fingerprinted. I lost all interest.
I didn't think I'd have any problems passing a background check, I've done them before for things like getting in the military and getting government work. I just didn't like the idea of having to take my time going through that again for something as mundane as a tour of a power plant.
While on vacation one summer I happened across a sign for a hydroelectric power plant. I recall it was called Raccoon Lake but a quick Google search tells me that is in the middle of Indiana and I'm pretty sure the dam I was at was in Tennessee. Anyway, I had time so I took a detour to see if I could take a tour or something. I got there and found the visitors center. I had a look around, they had a video playing on continuous loop showing the history of the area and how the dam worked. The video ended with a message to ask for a tour. I then asked to get a tour. I was told tours were no longer offered "for security reasons".
I recall seeing a Youtube video recently about nuclear power where some nuclear power plant operator hated the security policies that banned tours. He wanted to show people how safe these power plants are. I understand where he's coming from, if nuclear power is so safe and secure then why can't we see that for ourselves? I can just imagine what people are thinking, do they have something to hide that they can't let me in?
While they have these security policies in place for the power plants the wires leaving them are totally insecure. I remember driving down the interstate and seeing these HUGE power lines going overhead. It was not long after getting denied a tour of the hydro plant "for security reasons" that I saw those power lines so the first thought through my head was just how easy it would be to take out that power line. The foundations for the towers that ran overhead were just out in the middle of someone's corn field. There was a fence around the field but it was just something to keep cattle from wandering in or out, not anything that any able bodied adult couldn't climb over or through.
The people that secure the power in this country have some seriously skewed priorities. We can't have people tour a hydroelectric plant "for security reasons" but some one can cut the communications to a power plant, shoot up some transformers, and no one knows who did it.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
It's always been the case that a more advanced foe can be defeated by a much simpler foe through indirect attacks on infrastructure, acruing nothing more than a huge expense for the advanced foe. This is no different.
You can't possibly defend something like the power grids we have today. It's just not possible. They are large, they are disparate, they are expensive, they are sensitive. What's more, they are each vital and completely non-redundant. And they are also literally everywhere. You can take out a curb-side box in seconds with a pickup truck, and kill power to a neighbourhood for a day.
No one's going to build the redundancy to withstand any destruction -- it's simply far too expensive.
But that's true of all centralized systems based on distribution -- which includes gasolene, by the way. That's actually the advantage of a centralized system. No kidding it doesn't stand up to warfare.
So, start supporting neighbourhood nuclear mini-reactors -- like your neighbourhood water towers -- or a bus-load of solar panels per house. Anything less won't be redundant, and hence will be easily attacked.
Has there ever been a case of the people raising up and over throwing a repressive government and improved things? I don't mean successful wars of independence where a colony or such successfully seceded but where the people without much help from the army overthrew the government? The only ones I can think of ended up as bad or worse then where they started from.
Seems that massive demonstrations, general strikes, and at the worse the army mutinying has had a much better rate of success. The army is much less likely to shoot on peaceful demonstrators, especially if they agree with the protest, then shoot on people shooting at them.
Recent examples include most of the ex-Soviet block and various Arab springs. Failures include the French revolution and the Russian revolution. Violent revolution usually seems to see a strong man end up on top as dictator along with a reign of terror to purge all the undesirables.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Ah, but there wouldn't BE any armed civilians, because as soon as they pull their Glock from their concealed carry place, they're now "open carry", and as such become targets themselves. Quick way to weed out everyone carrying a gun, leaving only the police and military with guns.
. Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep. Watch your coworkers go nuts.
Spares should be precisely what there's a lot of. To deal with actual, meaningful contingencies (trees taking out power lines, trucks driving into power lines, drunk Air Force commanders ordering live-fire practice on power lines, etc) there should be zero points of failure. Anywhere.
If a meteorite of the kind that lit up Russia early in the year, or the kind that lit up California the year before, hit a substation, no amount of armour will prevent serious damage. The CA one, discussed here as I recall, was the size of a minibus. The fragments that reached the surface - and reports say there were many - were certainly far more dangerous to a transformer than a few grams of lead.
You have to assume such a strike is inevitable. Prevention is impossible. Shielding would be stupid. That leaves option number 3 - make it not matter. It's cheap, easy, effective against any type of outage and provided you have decent routing protocols operating over a bidirectional mesh topology, resilience increases anywhere from superlinearly to exponentially.
Then what? Then you don't care if it's a meteorite, an airliner falling out the sky, an army tank driver on speedballs or Bob Bobkins, the brother and first cousin of Joe Bobkins, out hunting things that'll stay still long enough for him to point his rocket launcher. It. Just. Won't. Matter. Worth. A. Damn. The flicker of your LED house lights will barely register with even super-sensitivities. The routing protocols would have established new pathways to all destinations in microseconds, with the decisions being implemented a millisecond or two later. Nobody would notice and nobody would care.
There's an expense to redundancy, just as there is an expense to not having bridges fall in rivers. But it's a very small expense. The outages from the ice storms and rain storms? Those are big expenses. Big RECURRING expenses. With redundancy alone, due to the statistical nature of line loss, you could get extremely close to zero outage for anyone. Ever. Redundancy (down to as small a scale as practical), smarter placement of utilities (ie: not on thin poles in ice storm prone areas) and better material choices (aluminium cables?!) combined could guarantee the system would survive uninterrupted anything short of a nuclear bomb.
(You could design a complete infrastructure on a national scale that actually could withstand a full-blown nuclear war, but a lack of users would make it pointless. Unless we have developed AI by then. In which case, they and The Machines they'd need to maintain the system could endure pretty much indefinitely.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Not even full on military lockdown can prevent a commando style raid. The raid on the Telemark heavy water plant during WWII proved that. So unless you want a regime even more ruthless than a Nazi occupation force to protect your infrastructure maybe you should work on changing your nations behaviour to reduce the incentive for such raids.
Well written, and I think I do get your point. Too bad that it looks, at least from where I'm standing, like the folks who are most vocal about the need for the second amendment are some of the least likely to actually question the recent examples of government derailing.
This is the kind of paradox which fascinates me about American society. Another example is the pro-life/pro-choice debate where some of the staunchest pro-lifers put forth an argument of sanctity of life, i.e. that it is not for humans to decide questions of life and death. But those same folks are, almost without exception, somehow not opposed to capital punishment for that same reason.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
There's probably all kinds of little things like this that a determined group of 50 guys with legal firearms could do. The kinds of guns people talk about banning are probably less scary then real old-timey blackpowder guns, because making blackpowder is legal, and that shit could totally take out a bridge. So our 50 guys could ruin your commute, probably destroy the local sewer lines, take out a police station or three, etc. Hell I'd be stunned if it took five guys with 22s to storm a nuclear plant. You'd probably need more if you didn't have inside information on the plant's security, but not that much more.
The reason this shit doesn't happen is that it's really hard to get 50 guys to agree on a single operation without one of them ratting everyone out to the cops. For all that we bitch about our government, and the amount of times said government deserves to be bitched at, things have not gotten so bad that people think starting a Civil War is a good idea. Even in subcultures where you can get people to agree to fight the Power, generally by the time you've picked up two dozen guys you've picked up some loser who will be caught. Remember that the FBI in Minnesota had Zacarias Moussaoui in custody on immigration charges, and they had a pretty good idea that he was planning on crashing a plane into something, but they weren't able to convince anyone in DC to take them seriously.