Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

practical.engineering

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 259 posts

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#31

Post by htag »

LarryMullins wrote: post #10

It's quite interesting that they also attacked a substation that looked important on a map, but wasn't actually vital. I think some of the early reporting about this incident suggested they "knew what they were doing", but the apparent misidentification of one of their targets perhaps suggests the perpetrators were making educated guesses, without detailed/insider knowledge of how the system worked.

1. I think we are speculating about intention here. Maybe they were both incorrectly identified as connected to the larger grid. Maybe the smaller one was chosen as a second target for a different reason.

2. Nothing discussed in the video is insider knowledge. Everything is public knowledge, and could have been learned with a library card and an internet connection.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#32

Post by Waterluvian »

Spooky23 wrote: post #22
Waterluvian wrote: post #7

My wild, unsubstantiated guess: This is being taken very seriously because the power grid, as Grady points out, is incredibly vulnerable and out in the open. I don’t think it’s because there’s some conspiracy by Russia or whatever.

Russia isn’t engaging in some conspiracy, but they’ve certainly successfully run influence operations targeting the disaffected and vulnerable. There’s plenty of open source information about how active Russian agents were influential in organizations like the NRA. The United States is less stable than it was 30 years ago. The rot is starting in the periphery with the lack of opportunity or prosperity in rural Americ…

That’s true. Press your thumb ever so lightly on the social scale for enough decades and it adds up.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#33

Post by kcatskcolbdi »

panarky wrote: post #13
mc32 wrote: post #5

"Officials have stopped short of calling it an act of terrorism, presumably because we don’t know the motive of whoever perpetrated the act" There was another one elsewhere [Washington state [1]] and they found out the perps did it to facilitate knocking over some business of some sort. So, just because it quacks like a duck does not mean it either walks like a duck nor end ends up being a duck. There have also been…

Regarding the sabotage in Washington State, it doesn't make a lot of sense to attack four substations simultaneously just to steal from the cash register of a small business. If I fancied myself to be an antigovernment militia leader who had read all the white supremacist literature from the last 40 years that repeatedly describes attacking critical infrastructure like pipelines, telecoms and electricity pylons and s…

Imagine writing this unhinged mental fanfiction for every news article you read.

Headline: Man Steals Car

"Well, if I fancied myself a racewar enthusiast of course I would _say_ it was for money but it would obviously be in support of creating chaos and undermining the government institutions to allow for our brothers to rise against".

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#34

Post by _-david-_ »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #27
JasonFruit wrote: post #4

I'm much more interested in the motivations of the people involved.

It's bonkers (and infuriating) to me that domestic terrorists launched an attack on their own home soil and it wasn't front page news everywhere the next day.

We don't know if they are domestic or not and we don't know the motives.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#35

Post by LarryMullins »

geepound wrote: post #12
LarryMullins wrote: post #10

It's quite interesting that they also attacked a substation that looked important on a map, but wasn't actually vital. I think some of the early reporting about this incident suggested they "knew what they were doing", but the apparent misidentification of one of their targets perhaps suggests the perpetrators were making educated guesses, without detailed/insider knowledge of how the system worked.

They knew enough to shoot a part that is filled with fluid and hard to replace. They might have lacked the knowledge of "the grid" to make such an attack go beyond one county, but there was some degree of thought put into that attack. It's easier to attack than defend.

I think it probably doesn't take an electrical engineer to figure out that destroying the radiators would put the substation out of action at least temporarily, but it does show they put a bit of thought into it at least. It doesn't seem like a case of a dumbass using the substation for target practice on a whim, it all seems very deliberate and purposeful.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#37

Post by [deleted] »

kcatskcolbdi wrote: post #33
panarky wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the sabotage in Washington State, it doesn't make a lot of sense to attack four substations simultaneously just to steal from the cash register of a small business. If I fancied myself to be an antigovernment militia leader who had read all the white supremacist literature from the last 40 years that repeatedly describes attacking critical infrastructure like pipelines, telecoms and electricity pylons and s…

Imagine writing this unhinged mental fanfiction for every news article you read. Headline: Man Steals Car "Well, if I fancied myself a racewar enthusiast of course I would _say_ it was for money but it would obviously be in support of creating chaos and undermining the government institutions to allow for our brothers to rise against".

[deleted]

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#38

Post by LarryMullins »

kcatskcolbdi wrote: post #33
panarky wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the sabotage in Washington State, it doesn't make a lot of sense to attack four substations simultaneously just to steal from the cash register of a small business. If I fancied myself to be an antigovernment militia leader who had read all the white supremacist literature from the last 40 years that repeatedly describes attacking critical infrastructure like pipelines, telecoms and electricity pylons and s…

Imagine writing this unhinged mental fanfiction for every news article you read. Headline: Man Steals Car "Well, if I fancied myself a racewar enthusiast of course I would _say_ it was for money but it would obviously be in support of creating chaos and undermining the government institutions to allow for our brothers to rise against".

He's right about this much at least:

> white supremacist literature from the last 40 years that repeatedly describes attacking critical infrastructure like pipelines, telecoms and electricity pylons and substations to create chaos

I've seen such advocacy posted many times on 4chan. That doesn't prove much, but I think it validates that line of speculation.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#39

Post by Animats »

This has happened before, in 2013, near San Jose, CA.[1] Utilities were supposed to upgrade security by building concrete walls around major transformers. There aren't that many of them. Did that happen?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack

Post reply on HN