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Are Squirrels A Bigger Threat To Our Critical Infrastructure? (bbc.com)
"The real threat to global critical infrastructure is not enemy states or organizations but squirrels, according to one security expert." Long-time Slashdot reader randomErr quotes the BBC.
Cris Thomas has been tracking power cuts caused by animals since 2013... His Cyber Squirrel 1 project was set up to counteract what he called the "ludicrousness of cyber-war claims by people at high levels in government and industry", he told the audience at the Shmoocon security conference in Washington. Squirrels topped the list with 879 "attacks", followed by birds with 434 attacks and then snakes at 83 attacks.
Those three animals -- along with rats -- have caused 1,700 different power cuts affecting nearly 5,000,000 people .
Those three animals -- along with rats -- have caused 1,700 different power cuts affecting nearly 5,000,000 people .
Build tremendous walls to protect our infrastructure and make the aminals pay for it!
Squirrels and birds are never going to scare the public to the point of feeling good about hundreds of billions in spending, or freely abandoning long-cherished rights.
Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
You can tell by where they are Putin the acorns.
Table-ized A.I.
Power cuts by drunks running into utility poles? Or idiots shooting out power transformers and insulators? And backhoe operators who don't call first to check for buried utilities?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
.. cause far more outages and damage. Squirrels merely live in trees. Blame the trees.
The number of deaths due to nuclear weapons, as a fraction of total deaths, is very small as well.
Squirrels are just a cost, not a threat. They don't coordinate to attack all at once like a hacker group or hostile country would do. They'll never take out the whole country at once.
They don't want middle eastern muslims to flood the USA and throw them off buildings.
Water vapor combustion products from power plants stays in the atmosphere, condenses and forms ice that downs power lines.
It's a vicious cycle. So....more funding for climate change studies.
Are BIGGER squirrels a threat to our infrastructure
They are frightening because they make no sense, because of the utter disarray of their existence. “They run around the floors like they’re on crack, and then they die,” he said. “They’re freakin’ crazy, man.” link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12...
Sick of hearing about squirrels being a threat.
Problems like this have existed for decades or more and we know how to prevent it.
It's a business decision whether to invest in prevention, mitigation, both, or neither.
The "foreign government cyber-warfare" problem is less well-understood and is ever-evolving.
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For what it's worth, most "mother nature" problems can be handled by having adequate redundancy and/or backup systems and, for most users, having an expected service level that allows for the grid (or internet, or other utility) to be offline for several seconds at a time while backup systems kick in. A state-level attacker is likely to be aware of the backup systems and attack both simultaneously.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
But there were two particular days in 1945 when that wasn't the case.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's not the number, in any system as large as the American electrical grid some percentage will always be down. The threat is some incredibly inconvenient parts of the grid going down at inconvenient times. Squirrels might cause thousands of "attacks", but they will never randomly knock out three levels of backups at key installations spread across the continent at the same time that China just happens to launch a nuclear attack.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
And stop thinking mankind is the ultimate in evolution.
I so wish there was competition between species for dominance of this planet.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Was typing a comment but got distrac
Here in Colorado Springs the problem seems to be raccoons in older parts of town. Not sure if raccoons are good to eat but some hunters shoot squirrels for food. Those found dead in substations fried on transformers are precooked.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Where's the "-1, Bad Pun" mod when you need it? :-)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
In the Central Valley of California, we have a long dry season and (generally) a short cold wet season. Squirrels rip the insulation off of buried power cables during the dry season. Then when the rains come, rain water shorts out the systems causing power outages. This used to be exceptionally common, but has been less so during our 5-year drought.
I'm actually surprised that we haven't had more power failures in the last month's "Pineapple Express" storms; my power hasn't even flickered in several months.
I've noticed rising squirrel populations in our housing development over the last ten years (chipmunks and a few other critters too). Sometimes they gnaw on parts of your house but they mostly go after the trash. I guess that it's the lack of natural predators that has their populations growing. If you want to see a safe habitat for squirrels, walk around Boston Common where the pigeons and squirrels can compete for your snacks.
Telegraph companies were dealing with problems like these in the 1840s. It's a damn nuisance when a rodent chews through a cable or a storm brings down a pole. But these are random, localized, events that aren't likely to cause any lasting harm.
When squirrels coordinate their attacks to target a large geographical area, then I'll be worried about them.
1700 attacks affecting 5M people is only 3000 people per incident. I'm not sure what time range those numbers cover but if it's 35 years (based on the talk being called "35 Years of Cyberwar: The Squirrels Are Winning"), that's only 50 incidents per year, which doesn't seem like a lot if spread across the USA or the world.
I've never been in a squirrel related power outages (that I know of), but have been in 2 car-accident related outages, I'd imagine that cars are a much bigger source of outages.
Squirrels are an event that you can plan for - it happens all the time and it's a calculated cost. They're not intelligent actors trying to sabotage your system, they're just varmints doing what they do. Someone probing and making a list of the vulnerabilities of your system so they can perform a massive across-the-board outage of your infrastructure is a completely different thing. When a squirrel takes out a transformer it only affects a local area and for a short duration of time. Since it happens all the time the utilities are used to it and are good at locating and repairing the damage. Someone messing with the infrastructure internally is going to be pretty much unprecedented and could be difficult to figure out and fix.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Squirrels are rats with hairy tails, that's all.
My father jokingly called them "tree rats" when I was a kid.
Squirrels chew on everything. Like all rodents, squirrels' teeth grow throughout their lives.
A power transformer across the street from my office window on the 2nd floor of the NE State office bldg was blown out three times during the ten year period before I retired. I watched the last rascal jump between two insulators and draw a 21,000 volt spark. There was an explosion and fell to the pavement. With the power down and nothing else to do I went outside to check the squirrel. His skin was split from his left rear foot pad to his left front paw, like a zipper had been unzipped. And the air was filled with the odor of cooked squirrel. I didn't see the previous rascal's demise but I went out to investigate it as well. It had somehow gotten jammed and the current cooked him and then carbonized him before it exploded.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
True story... back in the Stone Age, BI (Before Internet) I was at my first weather school in the USAF, at Chanute AFB IL, on a smoke break (remember those?), it was an instructor and a few us students.. we were on a side of the building that faced a sub-station.
There was a small explosion, we felt a very slight disturbance, a teeny tiny shockwave I guess. People started pouring out of the school -- the power had gone out at the school and surrounding buildings. After assessment, we were told "Go home, it'll be hours before it's fixed." A squirrel had gone and shorted out a transformer.. a big transformer, not those little ones you see up on poles. We later heard there was spalling around the transformer. Yea buddy, a squirrel and some metal made for shrapnel!
Second one, in North Miami - our building had only one way in for power, a 3-phase feed off a pole (!), then buried underground (!!) and into the power. Power goes out, but it was only one phase. The boss and I go to where the noise came from.. and there was a dead squirrel on the floor, with charred fur and a blown-out left hindleg. I still have the picture. It took FPL 3 hours to come and replace one fuse on the pole. Our 90 KVA UPS took the phones and network gear through those 3 hours with plenty to spare. No, we had no generator. Just a mondo UPS.
Fucking squirrels!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I'm a security-conscious sysadmin, which is why I spent my Saturday hunting squirrels.* You're welcome, America.
*actually, because free meat. Didn't know about The Rodent Threat until reading this, but you're still welcome, America.
The article only deals with power cuts. What about fiber data line cuts? We had a squirrel chew through one of our WAN links, inside a conduit. I can't imagine that could have tasted good.
They're not killing nearly as many people as toddlers with guns, and we're not doing anything about those!
http://www.snopes.com/toddlers...
Gonna ignore the pun and tell a short story.
Last summer my wife went outside in the morning and surprised a squirrel that had just dug a hole and was about to drop an acorn in it. It saw her and to hide its actions it started lifting the acorn up and down like a human exercising. Squirrel was totally like, "nothing to see here, just exercising, move along!" LOL
I'd read about the fact that when scrub jays (a natural enemy that eats and hides the same foods) are around they are more careful about their hiding places, and avoid hiding anything when the jay is watching. They're clearly evolving to the ways of humans, though they probably don't realize we're not stealing their food, we just pull up the ones that sprout, and clean the rain gutters seasonally. To them it seems like food competition.
"Rats must chew or their teeth grow through their heads!" - Hemlock Stones in Firesign Theater's - The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra
These growing rodent teeth, just like a dog or cat's claws are relentless. Imagine yourself a rodent with a need to chew- what would you choose? A rock? A discarded piece of fruit? It happens that the insulation used in much wiring is preferred.
I experienced this problem when rodents chose to chew the wiring in my new car at the place I was required to park overnight. It happens that a low tech solution was ideal. I acquired some spongy insulation that is normally used to insulate hot water pipes, and wrapped it around parts of my wiring harness.
The soft foam did not satisfy the chewing urge so the rodents never bothered my car again.
Whether animals or humans create some sort of threat, we should understand their motivations in order to form an ideal response. OFF TOPIC: and when we treat humans badly and expect them to be nice in return we are both blind and stupid.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Nyet!
Moose was sighted standing guard for squirrel!
Both escaped capture and are suspected to be in vicinity of Frostbite Falls.
Consultant Coyote has stated capture repeatedly fails due to lack of complicated schemes and devices to apprehend or annihilate subjects.
Coyote is expecting delivery from Acme Sales Corp. any day now...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Trump didn't win . . . Hilary lost. So good of you to admit that.
Eh, no talk stink. Those animals gave their lives for this.
Boris, that you?
Nyet, Boris and Natasha are busy tryink to make all traffik lights in US turn green at same time. They read about this in American science fiction story, http://www.gutenberg.org/files....
http://www.cantechletter.com/2...
My cat brought me a 'complete' headless squirrel. I considered it a magnificent gift.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
they will never, ever stop until they get what they want.
Squirrel Terminators.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I was doing testing when the local power company introduced a new system for outage and crew management. The first field report entering the system listed an outage as caused by a "fried tree rat".
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I had a Comcast tech tell me the critters are his nemisis. Also grow rooms!
Get up!
I'm pretty sure that should be a +1.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.