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Emergency declared and curfew imposed following North Carolina power grid attack

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Re: Emergency declared and curfew imposed following North Carolina power grid attack

#141

Post by refulgentis »

bcrl wrote: post #125
torben-friis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that the curfew could be caused not by the outages, but by the fact that there could be further attacks, or the suspicion that whoever did this wanted the outage as a first step for a more extensive plan.

It's far more likely to be vandalism, and that happens from time to time with infrastructure all over the place. Jumping to such an extreme overreaction does nothing other than make life miserable for everyone that's innocent. Deploy police to monitor infrastructure for sure, but locking down law abiding citizens seems like overkill.

This is in no way anywhere near normal, come on now.

Re: Emergency declared and curfew imposed following North Carolina power grid attack

#142

Post by burritas »

throwawaytoilet wrote: post #106
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #86

A grenade (or IED) or two thrown in coordination into a few of those local-area transformer / power distribution stations would cause state-level chaos. Where I live, these seemingly critical infrastructure outposts, are protected by nothing more than high chicken-wire fences. Cyber Squirrel is the best and longest-lived exemplification of the sensitivity and scale of this vulnerability: https://cybersquirrel1.com/ T…

A VHS cassette tape thrown over transmission lines in the middle of nowhere coordinated at 3 or 4 key locations would do that too… and much easier ordinance to acquire. NMS systems can’t react and load shedding chaos is likely.

What's the significance of VHS tapes?

Re: Emergency declared and curfew imposed following North Carolina power grid attack

#143

Post by baybal2 »

dmix wrote: post #92
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #86

A grenade (or IED) or two thrown in coordination into a few of those local-area transformer / power distribution stations would cause state-level chaos. Where I live, these seemingly critical infrastructure outposts, are protected by nothing more than high chicken-wire fences. Cyber Squirrel is the best and longest-lived exemplification of the sensitivity and scale of this vulnerability: https://cybersquirrel1.com/ T…

Apparently "Lead time on replacement parts" is the biggest issue today with dealing with the issue in a prompt time frame. Maybe they should stock up on at least 1x set of repair parts that would take a long timeframe to replace? Ukraine has shown how important electric substation part supply chains are.

No post body was provided.

Re: Emergency declared and curfew imposed following North Carolina power grid attack

#144

Post by fbdab103 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #129
alexpotato wrote: post #126

This may turn out to be a good thing in the long run. Why? People (and news reports) have been highlighting the lack of security around critical infrastructure like this for years. Now that folks are deciding to attack these targets, hopefully more budget and time goes into actually securing them vs just throwing up some fences around them. Granted, there could also be the power industries version of "security theate…

Can such a widely distributed system even be protected from a determined actor?

Certainly strikes me as impossible. There are so many vital things required to keep society functioning.

Water treatment, electrical generation, electrical distribution, hospitals, medicine production, medicine storage, ISPs, cell phone towers, intercontinental internet cables, cargo rail, oil pipelines, petroleum refining, snow/ice removal...

With increasing economies of scale and centralization, it is also possible that some large number of critical services might no longer be as distributed and resilient as they were 50 years ago. How many factories does Kraft/Tyson use to produce cereals or butcher meat?

Re: Emergency declared and curfew imposed following North Carolina power grid attack

#145

Post by BLKNSLVR »

burritas wrote: post #138
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #86

A grenade (or IED) or two thrown in coordination into a few of those local-area transformer / power distribution stations would cause state-level chaos. Where I live, these seemingly critical infrastructure outposts, are protected by nothing more than high chicken-wire fences. Cyber Squirrel is the best and longest-lived exemplification of the sensitivity and scale of this vulnerability: https://cybersquirrel1.com/ T…

Don't underestimate meth heads looking for copper. I knew a power company employee that told me there were more than a couple of incidents of a tweeker getting fried at the local sub station after they scaled a 9-foot wall covered with warning signs, topped with razor wire, and monitored by a few security cameras...presumably with the notion they'd get a whole lot of copper out of there while everything was energized…

This highlights the vulnerability beautifully. If your random meth-head can get close enough to do some amount of infrastructure damage (frying themselves or not), a coherent enemy, mis-guided or otherwise, with time and resources to plan and execute, could do exponentially more.

But maybe drug-seekers are more crafty than I give them credit for. They're probably amongst the most motivated of humanity to reach their end-goal, so maybe it's not as good an example.

"If you want a problem solved, tell a meth-head there's a score in it for them if they succeed"

Re: Emergency declared and curfew imposed following North Carolina power grid attack

#146

Post by noirbot »

patmcc wrote: post #132
throwawaytoilet wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A VHS cassette tape thrown over transmission lines in the middle of nowhere coordinated at 3 or 4 key locations would do that too… and much easier ordinance to acquire. NMS systems can’t react and load shedding chaos is likely.

I think a lot about how terrorists don't act and I guess I don't understand their motives. Electric grids, fiber optic lines, train tracks, bridges, water mains, sewage treatment, all of these can be pretty easily disrupted with equipment that isn't hard to get and doesn't require extensive training. And the disruption could be extreme . I mean, I'm glad they're not doing any of this, but I'm puzzled.

I suppose most of it is that terrorism and just any ideological violence is more about sending a message than being effective. This isn't total war. The point isn't really to outage a random town/county from power or internet. You want to be flashy and obvious. It's why suicide missions are the common method. Being a martyr is more ideologically powerful than causing massive damage.

If you're subtle but effective, you look evil, and you're so clean and effective that for the most part people aren't scare of you. You don't even really want people to be scared of you.

Re: Emergency declared and curfew imposed following North Carolina power grid attack

#147

Post by noobermin »

alexpotato wrote: post #126

This may turn out to be a good thing in the long run. Why? People (and news reports) have been highlighting the lack of security around critical infrastructure like this for years. Now that folks are deciding to attack these targets, hopefully more budget and time goes into actually securing them vs just throwing up some fences around them. Granted, there could also be the power industries version of "security theate…

>Granted, there could also be the power industries version of "security theater" but I'm going to err on the side of optimism.

Literally this is all that happens. The only people who can be happy are those who sell security-ware.

Someone could get in a car and go and on a rampage running over multiple people downtown, and the response from people will be to put guardrails on every street and have people wear helmets outside, or even better, not be outside in anything other than a car, where the right alternative is to make a society where such happenings are rare and unthinkable not because of guardrails but because people are taken care of on a material level so they're less likely to turn into maniacs.

Re: Emergency declared and curfew imposed following North Carolina power grid attack

#149

Post by rattlesnakedave »

zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #131

This isn't the first time something like this had happened. What is DHS for if not preventing attacks like this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack

Metcalf immediately came to mind for me as well. Horrifying. I remember a WSJ article that cited an FERC study and claimed I think this is it, but on mobile and can’t find a mirror w/o paywall: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230402010457943...

Re: Emergency declared and curfew imposed following North Carolina power grid attack

#150

Post by anigbrowl »

joe_the_user wrote: post #115
anigbrowl wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the US doesn't have a federal domestic terrorism statute, and so things that we'd confidently label 'terrorism' if they happened overseas or originated in a foreign country become the subject of thorny debate if they have a domestic origin and an otherwise identical fact pattern. A decent write up of the legal issues here: https://www.aclu.org/other/how-usa-patriot-act-redefines-dom...

Your comment is strange and seems to misrepresent your source. Your linked article actually says that the current legal definition of (domestic) terrorism is quite broad, so the situation is the opposite - things we wouldn't label terrorism overseas - people protesting climate change, can be labeled terrorism here. Quote: The definition of domestic terrorism is broad enough to encompass the activities of several prom…

As yuo say, I'm literally correct. And the post is an answer to the question of 'why does this keep coming up in regard to every relevant news story?' Because there's no clear-cut statute, discussions don't terminate in clear answers, so everyone accuses their opponents of being terrorists but rejects the possibility of such a label being applied to themselves on legalistic grounds.

A simpler example of how this works: make a throwaway Twitter account or two, and start posting about how Trump, Biden, or both are committing treason. Die a little inside as you notice the subsequent discussions are mirror images of each other and contain about the same logical and rhetorical fallacies.

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