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London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

cnn.com

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Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#181

Post by chaps »

hypeatei wrote: post #170
chaps wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a weird take. Arresting someone for reporting a major security vulnerability is pretty shitty thing for a state to do. What you're suggesting is that that's not actually that bad. Same sort of logic that leads to people getting arrested for looking at HTML and reporting that it includes passwords.

> What you're suggesting is that that's not actually that bad. When did I ever say or imply that? I agree that intelligence agencies are draconian, but to imply that you'd be locked away (never to be heard from again) for pointing out that a substation could be bombed and cause power issues is ridiculous.

They were using a bit of hyperbole for sure (though another poster accurately pointed out to you methods used against Northern Irish folk), but the reaction of gov agencies to use imprisonment (even as a threat!) for pointing out security fuckups isn't without precedence. It's happened to me :)

So, I guess I really don't understand your point. That being arrested for pointing these things out isn't bad because it's not being disappeared?

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#182

Post by cozzyd »

petertodd wrote: post #137
dredmorbius wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most militarily-significant targets are themselves non-military. The Russian war of aggression on Ukraine is a prime example: power infrastructure, transportation, communications, commercial hubs, healthcare, and general civilian targets of opportunity are all targeted with high frequency by Russian forces. UK national security interests are spelled out in summary beginning on page 5 of this PDF, "Government Function…

> Most militarily-significant targets are themselves non-military. Indeed. Large scale war is extremely expensive. Russia's government is spending about 40% of total tax revenue on invading Ukraine. So anything it can do to harm the economies of the people fighting it helps. Equally, this is why Ukraine has been putting so much effort into blowing up oil and gas infrastructure in Russia, their #1 source of tax revenu…

perhaps they should blow up some airport substations as well...

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#184

Post by stavros »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #178
tigerlily wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natch, I feared as much. I've been seeing it more and more lately. I've found it's hard for me to look at. I'd say more but I'm already wasting words.

I wonder if anyone feels the same way about your use of "natch".

I do!

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#185

Post by michh »

traceroute66 wrote: post #138
michh wrote: post #94

Funny, how we're all suddenly privy to highly classified information. Yesterday, if you'd have publicly shared this one substation is enough to take down Heathrow for an entire day, you'd have been disappeared by the British spooks for sharing extremely sensitive information threatening national security and you'd probably end up behind bars for over a decade. Today, we all just know because it happened to catch fire…

> we're all suddenly privy to highly classified information Its not highly classified. Its not even plain classified. Its available on streetmap. The substation (like most are) is located on the edge of a residential area / industrial estate. People walk and drive past it every day. Looking at streetmap, there's even a multiple big signs outside that says "North Hyde Substation". They don't even make any effort to hi…

The fact this substation exists, yes, obviously. The fact taking it out takes out the entire airport: not so much! These kind of things usually aren’t dependent on a single substation. The fact that it is, is not something the UK government would have liked to be made public.

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#186

Post by belter »

traceroute66 wrote: post #169
joshuanapoli wrote: post #155

It's not the first time a major airport is down because of power failure, and other airports are working to address this type of vulnerability. > The power vulnerability for airports was never made more obvious and painful than in Atlanta seven years ago. An underground electrical system fire in late 2017 damaged two substations and caused a complete outage lasting nearly 12 hours at Hartsfield-Jackson International…

> It's not the first time a major airport is down because of power failure, and other airports are working to address this type of vulnerability. To be fair, I'd probably be more interested to hear what major airports are doing to avoid a reoccurance of CrowdStrike-type scenarios. Which is perhaps a more likely re-occurence than loss of substation feeds.

"Selected Airports’ Efforts to Enhance Electrical Resilience": https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-105203.pdf

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#187

Post by michh »

crote wrote: post #116
michh wrote: post #94

Funny, how we're all suddenly privy to highly classified information. Yesterday, if you'd have publicly shared this one substation is enough to take down Heathrow for an entire day, you'd have been disappeared by the British spooks for sharing extremely sensitive information threatening national security and you'd probably end up behind bars for over a decade. Today, we all just know because it happened to catch fire…

This kind of information has been available via open data for ages , and it isn't exactly hard for a foreign power with boots on the ground to figure out either. With this kind of large-scale infrastructure it just isn't viable to rely on security through obscurity. If you want to protect against failure, invest in redundancy.

I didn’t mean this substation existing. I know that’s obviously not a secret. The fact taking it out takes out the entire main airport for at least an entire day is a different matter. Do you really think they’d have been fine with you announcing that to the world yesterday?

Don’t forget the BT Tower existing was technically classified under the official secrets act, even though it was extremely obviously there for everyone to see including on maps.

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#188

Post by graemep »

blindriver wrote: post #10

Seems like a national security issue if there’s a single point of failure a few miles away that can take down one of Europe’s largest airports and global air travel.

but its expensive to fix single points of failure so lets just hope for the best.

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#189

Post by sss111 »

joshuanapoli wrote: post #155

It's not the first time a major airport is down because of power failure, and other airports are working to address this type of vulnerability. > The power vulnerability for airports was never made more obvious and painful than in Atlanta seven years ago. An underground electrical system fire in late 2017 damaged two substations and caused a complete outage lasting nearly 12 hours at Hartsfield-Jackson International…

Heathrow's power outage is much worse than Atlanta's, this is really bad. Allow me to make my point:

1. UK’s has one major airport to get out of the country—Heathrow. Gatwick and that lot don’t carry the same weight. When Heathrow goes down, you’re proper stuck. Atlanta has DC, Miami right there.

2. UK allows transit visas, so half the people transiting can’t even step out the terminal, what do they do when the airport is closed?

The US doesn’t allow that, everyone clears customs/passport control, so no ‘no man’s land’ limbo for stranded passengers.

3. Heathrow's outage is going to take 24 hours as of right now. That's twice Atlanta

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#190

Post by belter »

An Helicopter, has been running multiple 360 degrees rounds, around the whole perimeter of Heathrow for the last two hours or three hours.

I wonder if they are looking for something or somebody and there is more to this story. (click on the helicopter icon to see previous runs): https://www.flightradar24.com/GINTV/3990e5fc

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