Three cities experienced total blackout of power grid

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http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...ut-across-south-america/ar-AACYF3B?ocid=ientp

Interesting. Wonder if it was a trial "test" run so to speak?

Argentina's energy secretary said he does not believe a cyber attack caused a massive power outage that left tens of millions of people in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay in darkness for several hours on Sunday.


"At this moment we do not rule out any possibilities but... a cyberattack is not within the preliminary alternatives being considered," Gustavo Lopetegui told reporters on Sunday.

Argentina's President Mauricio Macri called the power outage, which also affected parts of Chile and southern Brazil, "unprecedented" and announced an official investigation into the cause.

As of now, no explanation for the widespread power failure has been identified.

The blackout comes as concerns rise over governments' abilities to disrupt other nations' power systems. The New York Times reported on Saturday that the United States is escalating cyber attacks on Russia's electric power grid and has placed potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system.

As of Sunday night local time, half of Argentina's power had been restored, including in the capital Buenos Aires, officials said.
 
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My first thought too. Otherwise, what are the links between those 3 major cities?
 
If we can do that to them, they can do that to us (i.e. Russia, China, etc) says me. I believe our grid is outdated and a soft target.
 
Do we have equipment that is similar to the cities affected?

Or does Russia?
You can bet %100 with out a doubt there is shared equipment.... Now if you want to get to the level of components and methods to secure them you will see the difference between the US and the rest of the world...
 
If we can do that to them, they can do that to us (i.e. Russia, China, etc) says me. I believe our grid is outdated and a soft target.
Tell us where you think we i.e. the US are soft on the grid and what needs to be done to fix it. You can make millions if you have a way to fix it. Loads of folks making big bucks doing just that
 
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I don't know much about power grids, but I know you can find transformers and substations all over the country, and the only thing protecting the vast majority of them is a chain link fence. I can imagine that just a few of them damaged in key places could knock out the power for large numbers of people for a long period of time.

Short of hiring armed guards to watch them 24/7, or fortifying them like they were in a war zone (both would be prohibitively expensive) I don't see any way of fixing that problem.
 
Tell us where you think we i.e. the US are soft on the grid and what needs to be done to fix it. You can make millions if you have a way to fix it. Loads of folks making big bucks doing just that

One man's opinion from what I remember reading 4-5 or so years ago about how vulnerable the power grid was/is. At the time it seemed legit. I don't know if it was truly credible or not. I feel confident that the US and Russia seem to be pretty equal when it comes to technology/espionage. Not to mention China, etc. I would certainly think they have thought of ways to exploit it. Again, my opinion. I would be quite happy for somebody to prove me wrong.
 
I don't know much about power grids, but I know you can find transformers and substations all over the country, and the only thing protecting the vast majority of them is a chain link fence. I can imagine that just a few of them damaged in key places could knock out the power for large numbers of people for a long period of time.

Short of hiring armed guards to watch them 24/7, or fortifying them like they were in a war zone (both would be prohibitively expensive) I don't see any way of fixing that problem.

There are so many ways to create a “localized” blackout from high tension power lines w/ a simple bare wire (the military even has specialized carbon filament ordnance devices for this) to simply popping a hole in the power transformer’s oil cooled radiator with a suppressed round from a couple hundred yards away. Local is simple ... the real attack risk is the grid being hacked and electronic switches being tripped, disabled, fried, etc. and that being done from anywhere. Remember back in 2017-18 the Con Ed was all but proven to have been hacked by the Russians ... they didn’t do any real damage but believed to have gain access to the gather intel, data, etc for future use.

Another possible weakness is when the electronics used to control the grid or in the equipment itself are made outside of US control latent maleware can be installed that can be set off remotely, on certain date and time or such for various reason from pure attack to holding the grid “hostage” ... being on a closed system off the net is not 100% safe for maleware either.
 
There are so many ways to create a “localized” blackout from high tension power lines w/ a simple bare wire (the military even has specialized carbon filament ordnance devices for this) to simply popping a hole in the power transformer’s oil cooled radiator with a suppressed round from a couple hundred yards away. Local is simple ... the real attack risk is the grid being hacked and electronic switches being tripped, disabled, fried, etc. and that being done from anywhere. Remember back in 2017-18 the Con Ed was all but proven to have been hacked by the Russians ... they didn’t do any real damage but believed to have gain access to the gather intel, data, etc for future use.

Another possible weakness is when the electronics used to control the grid or in the equipment itself are made outside of US control latent maleware can be installed that can be set off remotely, on certain date and time or such for various reason from pure attack to holding the grid “hostage” ... being on a closed system off the net is not 100% safe for maleware either.
So what is the solution?
 
There is much more of a threat of America becoming a Socialist Country then a total blackout. That being said I expect a blackout anytime.
 
There is much more of a threat of America becoming a Socialist Country then a total blackout. That being said I expect a blackout anytime.

The grid is a huge hodgepodge of incompetence. If it all collapsed tomorrow it wouldn’t surprise me. It won’t take an attack. We’ll likely screw it up on our own. And we are pretty much already a socialist country. :(
 
So what is the solution?
There really is none ... Where there is a will ... there is a way ... especially when big bucks and/or a government is behind it! Truly all we as individuals can do is be halfway prepared to deal with chaos kinda like being halfway ready for a hurricane, winter storm or such.
 
Don't think it hasn't be tried or tested. I used to get something called the Open Source Infrastructure Report from DHS. It showed local reports of incidents to assess correlation. There was a "probing" incident several years ago and it was categorized as vandalism by the locals, so the story never really went anywhere and not a lot of people heard about it. But, if you read some of the details, it was hardly simple vandalism. Here are some of the details... BTW, that same week, someone beached on the river bank border of a nuclear power station and walked on to the property, heading toward the buildings. As security approached they jumped back in the boat and left.

Time to wake up and smell the coffee. :cool:

Metcalf sniper attack
On the morning of April 16, 2013, a team of gunmen, using rifles, opened fire on the Metcalf Transmission Substation, severely damaging 17 transformers.


Preparation
Prior to the attack, a series of fiber-optic telecommunications cables operated by AT&T were cut by the culprits. Additionally, following the attack, investigators found small piles of rocks near to where the shots had been fired, the type of formations that can be used to scout firing positions.


Timeline

  • 12:58 a.m. – AT&T fiber-optic telecommunications cables were cut not far from U.S. Route 101 just outside south San Jose.
  • 1:07 a.m. – Some customers of Level 3 Communications, an Internet service provider, lost service. Cables in its vault near the Metcalf substation were also cut.
  • 1:31 a.m. – A surveillance camera pointed along a chain-link fence around the substation recorded a streak of light that investigators from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's office think was a signal from a waved flashlight. It was followed by the muzzle flash of rifles and sparks from bullets hitting the fence.
  • 1:37 a.m. – PG&E received an alarm from motion sensors at the substation, possibly from bullets grazing the fence.
  • 1:41 a.m. – Santa Clara County Sheriff's department received a 911 call about gunfire, sent by an engineer at a nearby power plant that still had phone service.
  • 1:45 a.m. – The first bank of transformers, riddled with bullet holes and having leaked 52,000 US gallons (200,000 l; 43,000 imp gal) of oil, overheated, whereupon PG&E's control center about 90 miles (140 km) north received an equipment-failure alarm.
  • 1:50 a.m. – Another apparent flashlight signal, caught on film, marked the end of the attack. More than 100 expended 7.62×39mm cases were later found at the site.
  • 1:51 a.m. – Law-enforcement officers arrived, but found everything quiet. Unable to get past the locked fence and seeing nothing suspicious, they left.
  • 3:15 a.m. – A PG&E worker arrived to survey the damage.
Sophistication of attack
Former Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Jon Wellinghoff stated that military experts informed him that the assault looked like a "professional job", noting that no fingerprints were discovered on the empty casings. He has described the attack as "the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred".

Henry Waxman, a ranking member of the United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce, stated that the attack was "an unprecedented and sophisticated attack on an electric grid substation with military-style weapons. Communications were disrupted. The attack inflicted substantial damage. It took weeks to replace the damaged parts. Under slightly different conditions, there could have been serious power outages or worse."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack


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Our power grid is a crazy quilt of connections. There are only 3 major grids, Eastern, Western and Texas. Yes, Texas has their own grid. Cascading failures are not uncommon. Sometimes, the automatic backup switching works, only to overload the backup circuits. As someone else mentioned, we're always teetering on failure, partially due to drastically increased demand on existing circuits.
How to fix it? Some have been calling for shoring up of the power infrastructure from some time. I know Newt Gingrich is one. But, no one wants to budget for it. Meanwhile, think about how you can learn to live like the Amish and pray a lot.
 
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So what is the solution?
Upgrading Scada infrastructure.
Airgapping sensitive networks.
Mandate following DISA stigs.
Implement SE Linux on a widescale.
Disallow BYOD, implement 802.11x, encryption, disallow USB devices and protect against rubber duckies, implement multi-factor authentication.
Implement NAC(say Cisco ICE or Aruba Clearpass for example) with Next-gen firewalls(Palo Alto or Cisco Firepower when they get it working).
Continous monitoring and auditing.
Pay for outside checks by reputable sources, like FireEye.
Standardized NIST frameworks, so that things can easily be checked.

Not my area, but maybe switch from larger, less easily replaceable turbines, to smaller, more easily replaceable ones. Strategically keep backup turbines in areas to in case of failure.

TL;DR
$$$$$
 
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Actually experts now predict that a widespread communications failure would materially increase productivity as a result of the elimination of TV, social media and on-line porn.
 
Upgrading Scada infrastructure.
Airgapping sensitive networks.
Mandate following DISA stigs.
Implement SE Linux on a widescale.
Disallow BYOD, implement 802.11x, encryption, disallow USB devices and protect against rubber duckies, implement multi-factor authentication.
Implement NAC(say Cisco ICE or Aruba Clearpass for example) with Next-gen firewalls(Palo Alto or Cisco Firepower when they get it working).
Continous monitoring and auditing.
Pay for outside checks by reputable sources, like FireEye.
Standardized NIST frameworks, so that things can easily be checked.

Not my area, but maybe switch from larger, less easily replaceable turbines, to smaller, more easily replaceable ones. Strategically keep backup turbines in areas to in case of failure.

TL;DR
$$$$$
Take your list to utilities with a plan to administer it and get rich.
 
Actually experts now predict that a widespread communications failure would materially increase productivity as a result of the elimination of TV, social media and on-line porn.
Yeah, like people would actually decide to work with that extra time. :rolleyes:
Take your list to utilities with a plan to administer it and get rich.
Funding. It's not new. It's a known problem with known solutions. No one wants to pay for the fixes. It's not a technical problem, we know the answers. It's a financial problem. Who's going to pay for it? Should it be government funded with tax dollars? Should the utilities foot the bill? What's their return on investment?

I used to work in IT infrastructure. Disaster recovery/business continuity was one of my areas. When companies would come to us wanting a solution, they would always wanted "the best", most seamless design. That is until we showed them the quote for the project. They usually ended up with the cheapest or next to the cheapest solution, because they knew they needed something. There was no perceived ROI. It's all about the money.
 
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