I have sen and read from a couple weeks ago about a report from DHS saying with cyber attack’s there is a chance our grid could go down and possibly for up to six months. Has anyone else seen or read anything about this?
Seen reports it could happen for years. Someone saying it's trying to happen would be big news all over everything out there at which point either it would already have happened or they would be yanking hard lines to stop the penetration from happening. Honestly it's probably less of an issue than a lot of news media would like to put on. The power systems can be ran on windows 95 for all that it matters as long as they are kept air gapped. The sysadmins out there dealing with the security on these things likely do something very similar and I can guarantee the systems are not running windows 10 getting updated whenever microsoft wants either. If they were the grid would have crashed months ago.
I was totally involved with power plant security. There is a difference in power plant security and the grid.
Obviously I can't say a lot, but power plant control systems are NEVER connected to the internet. They are autonomous systems that operate stand alone.
The grid on the other hand since the big blackout in the NE several years back is at the pinnacle of security in its operation, and is being completely redesigned.
I wouldn't have too many concerns about exceptionally long term outages. When OGE had the big Ice storm several years ago, we watched the 130' towers topple from the power plant as far as we could see like domino's. Two weeks later, everyone was back in service. The grid is designed so isolated outages don't affect the entire grid. If a 1000 megawatt power plant goes down, all the other plants on the grid pick up on the dip and automatically raise up their load to meet requirements. The "dip" would never be noticed by homeowners or businesses. It's that sensitive.
Yeah, I figured some of the systems are air gapped. The rest I would figure have their own independent point to point lines for connecting the grid so that while they are using the same hardware as what you would use on the internet there is no crossing between. That or they have one HECK of a firewall setup and the only thing that goes in or out of those systems is information from the other systems with VPN's linking them.
But I have little to no worry about power going out due to an attack as even if the data lines go down between points the grid sections will likely operate only to keep their section up so the whole thing won't crash.
But I have little to no worry about power going out due to an attack as even if the data lines go down between points the grid sections will likely operate only to keep their section up so the whole thing won't crash.
The first design of the new control system I helped install in a power plant originally had a double firewall. The software had a serial number of #1 and #2. It had never been seen anywhere else.
It took an ABB tech about 2 minutes to break it down during beta testing and get into the system. The decision to be autonomous was pretty simple.
Yeah, there are ALWAYS holes. Open source stuff tends to have less since so many people are dealing with the code and looking it over. But some people make a career of breaking through stuff too.
https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-s...curity/10-essential-bug-bounty-programs-2017/
https://hackerone.com/bug-bounty-programs
https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-s...curity/10-essential-bug-bounty-programs-2017/
https://hackerone.com/bug-bounty-programs
Yes. This guy started his career with ABB because he was part of a hacker vigilante club while a junior programmer with them using surplus equipment the company let the employees have. He and a group of folks built a system in a basement and went to work looking for hackers and hacking them to destroy their systems. Once ABB found his skills, he quickly worked into tech support and finally into their world wide security group. You don't want to know how much he gets paid now.
I have a special bond with him and we still keep in contact. He wanted pics from the top of our 500' tall stacks so I took him up. A little wind that day and when he walked out of the elevator, the stacks were swinging a few inches which feels like a few feet if you've never experienced it.
He locked up with a death grip on the hand rail with a blank look in his eyes, and it took most of an hour to talk him back into the elevator. LOL.
I have been seeing some stuff about it lately too. A friend with the FBI told me they have stopped a few attempts but he would not tell me more. I know the government has upped how much supplies they suggest we have on hand again. At the rate they are going they will want us to have years worth soon.
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