[Robert357]

Well this is getting interesting! I kind of suspected that the computer virus might have had some role in the Blackout. It will be interesting to find out more as this thing evolves. I did a quick search and found earlier information on this, but nothing quite as definative. So not thread drift on Unix systems or the horrors of Microsoft, please. Let's stay focused on the Electric Power system blackout.

Now back to work and meeting impossible deadlines.

[Robert357]

I saw this in the local paper and had to take a couple of minutes to log on and share this with you folks.

The level of the cascading of the power system in the blackout just didn't seem right. I still think it will take a bit more time for things to come out, but the picture is kind of interesting. One firm that we sometimes use as a specialty subconsultant on transmission line design, Commonwealth, has a computer model of the east coast blackout rolling through the transmission grid that they are selling for $200. I'm trying to get a free-be of it so I can better visualize what happened.

Well got to log off now and get back to my clients. Ernest, you are in my prayers. Have fun with this one gang.

[FormerlyAnotherLurker]

From "Mechanical Engineering Magazine DEC 2002"
(SCADA = supervisory control and data acquisition)


SCADA vs. the hackers

Can freebie software and a can of Pringles bring down the U.S. power grid?
by Alan S. Brown


As far as we know, no one has ever deliberately hacked into the U.S. electrical grid and pulled the plug on millions or even thousands of people. Just as on Sept. 10, 2001, no one had ever deliberately crashed a jet airliner into a skyscraper.

Is the power grid vulnerable to cyberattack? What about natural gas pipelines, nuclear plants, and water systems? Or refineries and other industrial facilities that run on similar Internet-enabled digital control systems? Could a terrorist or disgruntled employee cause lethal accidents and millions of dollars of damage? What about a bored 14-year-old?

"Are we vulnerable?" asked Joseph Weiss, executive consultant for KEMA Consulting, which is based in Fairfax, Va. "Of course, we are. We designed ourselves that way."

None of the industrial control systems used to monitor and operate the nation's utilities and factories were designed with security in mind. Moreover, their very nature makes them difficult to secure. Linking them to networks and the public Internet only makes them harder to protect.

... EXCERPTED - For full text >
http://www.memagazine.org/backissues/dec02/features/scadavs/scadavs.html

[biblewonk]

Quit using PC based junk and start using embedded software.

[SengirV]

But everyone here swore that the blackout was not a windows issue. Wake up people!!!

[snopercod]

We have a FReeper who had actually worked in the dispatch center where the "balky computer" was. He related that it was a proprietary computer and operating system, not Intel/Microsoft at all.