Hacking Edison

There's a scary, but unsurprising, piece in the Washington Post today about hackers consistently attacking and testing the vulnerbilities of the U.S. power grid.  The story says:

 

"The vulnerability of the nation's electrical grid to computer attack has grown as power companies have transferred control of their electrical generation and distribution equipment from private, internal networks to supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, systems that can be accessed through the Internet or by phone lines, according to consultants and government reports. That technology has led to greater efficiency because it allows workers to operate equipment remotely.

 

"Other systems that feed information into SCADA or that operate utility equipment are vulnerable and have been largely overlooked by utilities, security consultants said.

 

"Some utilities have made hacking into their SCADA systems relatively easy by continuing to use factory-set passwords that can be found in standard documentation available on the Internet, computer security consultants said."

It concludes:

"O. Sami Saydjari, chief executive of the Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.-based consulting firm Cyber Defense Agency LLC, said hackers could cause the type of blackout that knocked out electricity to about 50 million people in the Northeast, Midwest and Canada in 2003, an event attributed in part to trees interfering with power lines in Ohio. He said that if hackers destroyed generating equipment in the process, the amount of time to restore electricity could be prolonged.

'"I am absolutely confident that by design, someone could do at least as [much damage], if not worse' than what was experienced in 2003, said Saydjari, who was one of 54 prominent scientists and others who warned the Bush administration of the risk of computer attacks following Sept. 11, 2001. 'It's just a matter of time before we have a serious event."'

Comments

[Gary]

Might be useful!

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