NSA Chief: We Must Start Preparing for the Inevitable Loss of our Power Grid

[Ronald_55]

42 minutes ago, Murgatroy said:

You underestimate what these bored kids can do. They are the same ones that provide Wikileaks hacked emails, were responsible for "The Fappening" and write new ransomware daily. Think darkly enough and they hacked Clinton's email, and rigged the election.

Hiding your head in the sand and saying some bored kids can't to that is being very naive. My daughter is eleven and can hack game code to rewrite games.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk
 

It is not about the kid sometimes, it is the tools. If a xbox playing, pizza eating, bored kid stumbled on the right tool kit and applied it, all hell could break loose.

I know for a fact that lots of "virus" code begins as white hat vulnerability testing that gets stolen and slightly reworked. So it is not far fetched.

It does not matter who does it if it gets done. Also, it could be exploiting some previously undiscovered weakness. What if they skewed the power rating reported to allow units to burn out without being shut down. Or attacked a flaw in a chip used on the control boards to slam the generators into reverse....all at once. Obviously, I am not an expert on these systems, but a little study would go a long way. Burn out enough stuff and the outage becomes "as long as it takes to replace all the parts".

Edited July 21, 2017 by Ronald_55

[leroy]

Murgatroy.... My experience is from being around this stuff for about 40 or so years and understanding it somewhat... On a personal basis, i believe that the "...Hiding my head in the sand..." is a bit hyperbolic.. Believe what ya will... I'll be a bit less dismissive when ya are talkin about somethin other than speculating on what a bored kid can do... Ya probably need a job with the NSA... 

disbelievin leroy... The cynic...

[bersaguy]

Quote

 

I'm sure there have been some people here that have seen the movie "War Games" with Matthew Brodrick where he almost set off world war III by trying to play games. Now that was a "MOVIE"and Hollywood and it was back before computers were no where near as high tech as they are now. Kids today watch those types of movies and they get ideas.

I don't doubt that many of the leaks that they are complaining about in DC may be coming from these so called kids and that might be why everyone says they are anonomous(spelling) because many of them are. Wikileaks got a lot of what they posted from hackers about the DNC and Hilliary and were the same people that were able to hack into Hilliary's email accounts. Now with that said, I don't think these kids are stupid at all but instead they are highly intelligent. They know that if they bring down the grid they also shut themselves down and that is the last thing they would want to do so even if they could do it they won't........................JMHO

[Omega]

Honestly, I think we have more to worry about with a naturally occurring event such as earthquake, volcano, meteor etc taking us down a peg.  We hacked into Iran's nuclear reactors with stuxnet, and only managed to, according to some sources, destroy 1/5th of their reactors.  And that was with at least one superpower, some say more, trying to dismantle their nuke program.  And some of you feel a kid in his basement can take the US grid down?  No, the most likely think to do that is possibly a solar flare or an airburst from a large meteor, and that is a rare occurrence.

[bersaguy]

29 minutes ago, Omega said:

Honestly, I think we have more to worry about with a naturally occurring event such as earthquake, volcano, meteor etc taking us down a peg.  We hacked into Iran's nuclear reactors with stuxnet, and only managed to, according to some sources, destroy 1/5th of their reactors.  And that was with at least one superpower, some say more, trying to dismantle their nuke program.  And some of you feel a kid in his basement can take the US grid down?  No, the most likely think to do that is possibly a solar flare or an airburst from a large meteor, and that is a rare occurrence.

I agree with you 100% Omega. I don't think many people give consideration to the unsettling ground that is know as Yellow Stone. If that baby pops I would guess you could about write of most of the U.S.A. a good bit of Canada and maybe even part of Mexico. It has been rumbling for many years now and folks don't even give it any thought what so ever..............JMHO

[xsubsailor]

7 hours ago, bersaguy said:

I agree with you 100% Omega. I don't think many people give consideration to the unsettling ground that is know as Yellow Stone. If that baby pops I would guess you could about write of most of the U.S.A. a good bit of Canada and maybe even part of Mexico. It has been rumbling for many years now and folks don't even give it any thought what so ever..............JMHO

 I was looking at this a while back. It might get kinda dirty around here.

 

[bersaguy]

33 minutes ago, xsubsailor said:

 I was looking at this a while back. It might get kinda dirty around here.

 

Maybe with enough luck it will break that thin fault holding California to the rest of America and it will fall off in the ocean..................

[gjohnsoniv]

There will be a false flag and North Korea will be involved, I guarantee it.

[Ronald_55]

1 hour ago, xsubsailor said:

 I was looking at this a while back. It might get kinda dirty around here.

 

So basically write off the bread basket states. No more crops there for a long while. That leaves the entire East coast to go hungry.

[xsubsailor]

What's a little ash among friends, as it doesn't trigger the New Madrid Fault 

[walthermitty]

A long time ago, I remember reading that TVA was one of the only regional suppliers that could be autonomous.  It was in the local news, the Tennessean I think.  The reason it made the news was that TVA wanted to get (entwined?) with the grid, so that it could sell more electricity.  Some people were against this move for fear of susceptibility to a whole grid shutdown as well as the fear that the utility would be forced to supply other regions, and it could increase rates in this region.  Seems like this was shortly after a brown out in the northeast.  Of course, this was more than 10 years ago.  I'm pretty sure TVA won their bid to expand.

I think those inter-tie links make the grid very vulnerable with the sophistication of today's hackers. Seems the more potential danger, the more precautions required.  Society follows this rule when it lowers speed limits in school zones and congested areas, as well as in other ways. 

I'm no leach, but my pension and ss retirement funds are direct deposited.  I don't live within walking distance of water that I can transport (for cooking, bathing, etc.)  Food would be difficult to get, as well.  So, for the first time in my life, I have considered having a few weeks worth of water and food on hand.  I'm certain that a collapse of the electrical grid would be devastating to the majority of citizens.

By the way, I saw a documentary on stuxnet that showed that it spread beyond Iran.  The virus "escaped," and is still "out there" and affecting some systems in the world that haven't been updated.  And, while natural disaster may be more likely than a computer virus (I'm not sure of that,) natural disaster cripples only a relatively small area from local effects.  The wider spread problems come from disruption of electricity, transportation, water, etc..

While I'm not one to panic, it seems prudent to insure that such vital infrastructure is as safe as possible.  There is a lot of overlap of damage from natural and man made catastrophes.  We can help reduce the chaos of both.  Delay the Wall, the Mars trip, get smarter about military spending, and we're there.

Edited August 16, 2017 by walthermitty

[rmiddle]

There isn't a Grid to go down.  There are several Grids in the US.  2 very small ones in Hawii and Alaska.  One that covers most of the East Coast.  One that covers most of the West Coast.  The state of Texas has it own state grid that existed before the Fed's came and nationalized most of the grid.  So in order to take down the entire power grid in the US they would have to take down 5 grids.  Now taking down the east or west coast Grids likely isn't as hard as people think.  How many times have big chunks of the east coast gone down and been without power in the last few decades?