Wang Jianwei, a graduate engineering student in Liaoning, China, never imagined his paper on cyberattacks and the U.S. power grid would draw so much attention. However, concern about the paper is mounting due to the fact that it reportedly highlights a very real vulnerability of the U.S. power grid, the backbone of our nation’s civilian, commercial, and military infrastructure.
The report went largely unnoticed and unreported until Larry M. Wortzel, a military strategist and China specialist, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 10 that “Chinese researchers at the Institute of Systems Engineering of Dalian University of Technology published a paper on how to attack a small U.S. power grid sub-network in a way that would cause a cascading failure of the entire U.S.”
[...]
So is the U.S. at risk from a Chinese cyberassault on the power grid? That depends on who you ask. John Arquilla, director of the Information Operations Center at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. opines, “What we know from network science is that dense communications across many different links and many different kinds of links can have effects that are highly unpredictable. [Cyberwarfare is] analogous to the way people think about biological weapons — that once you set loose such a weapon it may be very hard to control where it goes.”
Interesting idea that the Chinese would take down the US power grid or America for that matter with the US owning so much money.
I suppose it’s always a possibility, but anyone can see that the greatest danger is coming from within.
After witnessing this weeks massive government power grab I would be more inclined to give credit for future destruction to President Pelosi and her Socialist Party.
Hey dodd…it’s the right-wing lunatics you need to fear…they’re already throwing bricks through windows.
What’s next? Assassinations? The DHS is already watching these idiots, you should too.
Pelosi’s Socialist Party tossed out the rule book so expect more than the throwing of bricks.
The Obama administration and the lapdog media have successfully divided and conquered. Now get ready for the unintended consequences.
Dodd, so now you’re defending terrorists?
#24-Olo Baggins of Bywater
I’m for defending personal freedom from government interference.
It’s crystal clear that you don’t have a clue what you are defending.
dodd, so you’re one of them. Try this on and see how it fits:
ter·ror·ism
1. The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
2. The state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3. A terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.
-dictionary.com, and many other places too.
Hate to spring it on you Dallas, but a highly distributed system can be even MORE inclined to unstable behavior than a centralized one as they are prone to hidden emergent behaviors. Indeed, most industrial and infrastructure was once safe because it was isolated and centralized – as well as very conservative in its design. But it’s just too easy to run everything off an XML link from a window somewhere on the interwebitubes. And here we are.
What is required is design for robustness in the case of failure – both random and malicious attack – and both network and real physical attack on the assets themselves.
This is expensive and very difficult. Something that tends to get overlooked in all but the most paranoid applications.
Best bet for the personally paranoid is to buy a dual fuel natural gas/LP generator with a big 750 gallon tank in the back. And don’t network its controls.
One of the key issues is that big power generators can’t spin up or down based on demand–with any speed at all. Yet, demand can fluctuate dramatically, leaving us with a conundrum. The original answer was the grid, letting excess power flow elsewhere and getting a boost from others’ excess during peaks. If the industry can develop useful large-scale power storage, then smaller centralized systems are more likely, and the fragile grid can be largely decommissioned.
WOW,
so someone exposes something Iv mentioned long ago.
The infrastructure of the USA is SERIAL format.
There is little Backup/parallelism/Support/redundancy/… to keep most of our systems WORKING.
Even the internet has little BACKUP to support a major Break. There are FEW interconnects to reroute a broken line.
Electrical power is an OLD string of xmas lights. If 1 line is broken, you can take out WHOLE strings. Finding the break and fixing it, is a PAIN, you would have people running around for MILES of power lines to Find it.
Even major Server farms have little or NO BACKUP. as shown when MSN went down for 4 days and lost TONS of data. You cant just SCRATCH a system and LOAD the daily backup and be BACK in 2hours..
Do you wonder why they keep the Location of FIBER optic lines OFF THE NET?? You could HIT 3 locations in the USA and and Cut all the lines.
Most of the problems with the Electrical supply in the USA, is the location. The corps/gov have setup a Single location power system, rather then a distributed system. It makes for a system thats easy to find and cause problems.
Even the Basic internet ISP, is at a disadvantage, WITHOUT competition. When you have only 1 source for service, if anything happens, you have no recourse.
#26-Olo Baggins of Bywater-terrorism-The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
You mean the Union thugs paid for by the Democratic Party to show up at townhall meetings and tea parties with orders to intimidate and inflict violence on peaceful protesters.
Yeah, terrorism fits you pretty good.
This reminds me of the power blackouts we had in the late 90s in California due to one sub-station shutting down that caused an automatic shutdown of other on the network that caused nearly the whole west coast to go black.
The problem is this: There’s just barely enough power generation sources that powers a grid, so they share the load amongst other grids. So if one area of the grid needs power, it can be compensated from another area that isn’t using much, but can still output the needed power. So it balances out.
However, if one of those power sources drops out, for whatever reason, suddenly all the remaining power plants can get overloaded since the load is still present.
Automatic systems detects when the load is about to go too high, and shuts off so it won’t damage it self. Again this causes yet MORE load on the remaining power plants, and you start a domino effect of them shutting down since you’re losing more power sources, yet the load is still high.
It’s better for the power plants/stations to shut down for a few hours, rather than damage them which could keep them offline for months. Worse it could just go kablewy!!
Obviously this is a bad system, and the best way to avoid this sorta thing is to set up your own power sources. Be it solar, windmill, or a big fuel-cell in your garage (where your car would be) and you can usually GET A CHECK (instead of a bill) from your local power company as you feed your excess power into the grid.
#1
The united states “government” may not be, but people living here in the USA (or for any country for that matter) may be thinking about this sorta thing.
Ever since 9/11 we realized that potential enemies are no longer sovereign nations, that have borders with other countries we can ally with and play global chess. Terrorists (or any group that doesn’t like western culture) can be all over the world, peppered around the planet just waiting.
It’s time we stop relying on large government, large corporations, and large service companies.
If you want to protect your home and family, get a gun. If you want to earn a living with out the fear of losing your job from downsizing, and bankruptcy, start your own business. Don’t want to lose power because PG&E fucked up, get your own fuel-cell.
A different perspective.
For the TLDRs out there, a quote: “And independent American scientists who read his paper said it was true: Mr. Wang’s work was a conventional technical exercise that in no way could be used to take down a power grid.”
# 32 “If you want to protect your home and family, get a gun. ”
And hope whoever you just blew away isn’t a member of your family.
Or that you didn’t kill a neighbor dressed up for Halloween that you’ve known for years.
That’s just two incidents that have happened in the last few years.
#33
AND YOU BELIEVE what you read?
Its not really hard.
#34
and if you dont know HOW to use a gun, and HAVE TRAINING…plz to get one..find a friend or neighbor that will defend you..AND PRAY
How do you blind the Chinese? Put a windshield in front of them!
Dodd, you watch far too much of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and listen to Rush too much…that “union thug” thing is direct from their mouths. You get credit for being a good ditto head.
But you didn’t finish the original point, you wandered away to avoid it…do you condone the brick throwing/terrorism, or do you denounce it?
#37-Olo Baggins of Bywater-You get credit for being a good ditto head.
Truth is where you find it.
>>do you condone the brick throwing/terrorism, or do you denounce it?
I condone slamming a wooden stake through the heart of those that stroke their ego using tyranny as a weapon.
The only problem with this approach is people like President Pelosi and Puppet Obama don’t have a heart. The closest you can get is to shove a wooden stake up their ass.
those that stroke their ego using tyranny as a weapon
Why is the right so insistent on projection? Nevermind, probably has something to do with that alternative reality they inhabit.
#39-Olo Baggins of Bywater-Why is the right so insistent on projection?
Why does the left blindly follow creatures of deceit?
The good news is this week the Democrat Party ceased to exist.
The bad news is it is now the Socialist Party.
Wake up and smell the sulfur.