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Very interesting, the info on that thread. It appears the vunerability is the wide communication network necessary to monitor all of the nodes.
This is similar to systems I work with on tankers, although they are DSC/PLC. A self contained network.

Because they are so widely distributed over various networks, it would be entirely possible to "hack" these controllers.

And if someone really understood the system they would only have to hack one controller. From what I have read on this thread, a generating plant will trip off line in two cicumstances, if it is overloaded and too many amps are being drawn, or if the generator is underloaded it will trip off to prevent overspeeding.

So if you could, via hacking, open one major relay, say near the Niagra power plant, the generator would trip off line because it was underloaded. Now quickly close the relay and the load soars on the grid, because you have already lost one major producer.

Now the nearest generators are overloaded, and begin to trip off line before their windings get fried. The cascade starts, and maybe comm network overload because of worm slows reponse times, and the blackout spreads much wider than it would under normal cicumstances.

Thats my scenario/speculation. Any techs or engineers out there to analyze this?