China and Russia penetrate US power grid

[iwire]

Guys, you must stay on the electrical end of this.

 

[weressl]

Lao Tzu - I let you guess what nationality he was - some centuries ago wrote a treatise on warfare that is compulsory reading for advanced(colonels and up) students of military strategy.QUOTE]

Are you referring to The Art of War by Sun Tzu? I believe Lao Tzu was a Taoist philosopher from way back when.

Duh......how can I mix up the two Tzu's? Western ignorance, they would say.....:smile:

 

[weressl]

Guys, you must stay on the electrical end of this.

Aren't we when we are discussing the security implications that affects the reliability of the system? Do you think you don't need to be security conscious about the work you do? How can you understand the danger when you don't understand the people, motive and philosophy behind it?

 

[weressl]

I totally agree. I heard this on the radio today and the "expert" they hired to be the talking head for this story was (surprise!) the CEO of a company that sells industrial cyber security systems. Yeah, right...

I was have been involved in Utility relaying systems a while back and although the newer digital relays are technically now capable of being networked and thus "hacked" by someone, there is almost no damage that could be done to the system hardware itself. Worst case scenario is a localized temporary blackout by having relays trip. But after what happened in the North East a few years back, the "grid" has been updated to help prevent a cascading regional failure such as that. Besides, the utility system in this country is so fractured that very few of them use the same network system as their next door neighbor, so even if you had the unlimited cyber resources to crack one security protocol, all you could do with it is annoy a lot of people for a few hours.

So if I reconfigure a relay series to feed everything through a single chokepoint, overload it, remove the thermal protection levels and collapse the system that will do no damage to the equipment?

 

[Fulthrotl]

Guys, you must stay on the electrical end of this.

is there any precedent for that?

hm. keeping it electrical in nature.... the largest power outage, in the late
60's, was caused by a single breadbox relay. no computer attacks. the largest
single consequence of that blacked out night was a sharp spike in births, 9
months later.

the largest power outage in LADWP history was caused by someone with a
pair of dykes, cutting across three control wires at the same time. no computer
attacks. just an electrical mechanic with 15 years experience, and dykes.

as this is a "top of google" area, that may mean that the 'l33t haquer corps
is hanging on every word we write, for sensitive information they can use to
strike at the soft underbelly of the US way of life. please. spare me.

lots of the folks who post here are involved with the generation side of the
industry, and are far more knowledgeable than i about security issues.
i do know that scada backbones in this neck of the woods are isolated,
hardened systems, running on fiber. not so easy to get into. can they be
gotten into? of course. anything can.

as for the powerplants being unable to restart, 'cause no control power
was available, the plant's i've worked in all have the capability to start cold,
off the grid.

let's look at a situation that has existed for 27 years that i know of, in an
industrial situation i worked in. a terrorist armed with a pair of wire cutters,
and a $50 flare gun, could create enough of an explosion to break almost all
the window glass in LA, with a death and injury toll to rival a small tactical
nuclear warhead. i'll leave off the particulars, as i live within the blast range.:smile:

wirecutters, and a flare gun. that's all it takes. it obviously hasn't happened
yet. 27 years. will it happen? probably not.

chicken little published before her research was complete. the sky isn't falling.

the reports of all this computer attack stuff is just people with an agenda
whooping, to keep everyone scared.... in my not so humble opinion.


randy

 

[zog]

chicken little published before her research was complete. the sky isn't falling.

You calling me chicken little??

IMO this is more on the topic (This is the electrical engineering section) than 80% of the threads here, I am simply trying to promote an intelligent discussion of this issue, and so far I am very pleased with the posts, very good points made so far.

 

[don_resqcapt19]

...
as for the powerplants being unable to restart, 'cause no control power
was available, the plant's i've worked in all have the capability to start cold,off the grid.
...randy

I thought that in the utility world, "black" or "cold" start (no connection to an outside power source) was somewhat rare.

 

[drbond24]

I thought that in the utility world, "black" or "cold" start (no connection to an outside power source) was somewhat rare.

I'm not an expert, but unless you're at a hydroelectric dam wouldn't a black start be a really, really big deal? If you don't have huge amounts of potential energy stored in elevated water that you can release by simply opening a gate, how do you get started?

There are three generating units at the facility where I work, and it is a big deal to start one of them up without another one running even if you do have station power coming in from the outside. Without that station power, we'd be dead in the water.

 

[Fulthrotl]

You calling me chicken little??

IMO this is more on the topic (This is the electrical engineering section) than 80% of the threads here, I am simply trying to promote an intelligent discussion of this issue, and so far I am very pleased with the posts, very good points made so far.

absolutely not....

you know more about large scale power transmission than most people walking
around on the planet.

what does make my eyebrow raise is the talking heads on the news channel
screaming "the end is near" about everything from global warming, to fleas on
my cat. and this is one more thing to whoop about....

one early am, (like 3:30) i found myself talking with my second level forman
when i worked at dwp, and as we were talking about control power, and
related things, and i posed the question "how do you boot a stone cold power
plant, off the grid, so to speak...

he said that up until recently, many generating points in the system didn't have
that capability, but that since 9/11, that was being corrected, system wide.
so what little i know about this is based on a 20 minute conversation.

your biggest consideration, at this instant in time, is that scada doesn't actually
control all the positions on the grid, so if you lose everything, you have to have
operators driving to substations, opening ties and disconnecting loads, until
you are clear enough to have one generating source able to power up the
230kv backbone... then you can start bringing loads back online, and syncing
the rest of the generating capacity to the 230 bus, and connecting generators
and loads.

there aren't enough authorized people to make it all work. utilities used to
man stations 24-7, and that's been gone for a long time. it now operates with
a small fraction of the skilled personnel that it was originally designed to work with.

that is both a curse and a blessing. if it isn't remotely controllable, hacking
isn't a problem. if it isn't remotely controllable, having it go down and have
to reboot is going to take a lot longer.

so you've got all these substations, everywhere, and distributing stations,
and not enough operators to man them. i'm guessing here, but full automation
of the grid, at least the part i have seen of it, is over 10 years away, if we make
all due speed for that course.

a lot of the substations were built in the 20's and 30's around here, and are
still in service. upgrading them to full remote control is a daunting task.


randy

 

[Rockyd]

Anyone bother to read the new section 708 COPS? Just tossing it out there to all who want to give it due dilligence in their proper research...and staying within the intent of this code forum.