U.S. POWER GRID HACKED AGAIN

IT'S THE 12th OR SO TIME IN A DECADE THAT WE HAVE COME CLOSE TO "GRID DOWN", AND YET NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE TO CHANGE THINGS.  

IS IT IRAN?  
IS IT RUSSIA?  
IS IT ISIS?  
IS IT CHINA?  

ALL OF THOSE HAVE HACKED INTO OUR GRID, BUT NO ONE CAN SAY IF THEY WILL AGAIN, OR HOW MUCH VITAL INFO THEY STOLE DURING THE HACKS.  

FOREIGN POWER....OR IS SOMEONE LOOKING FOR THAT "NEW PEARL HARBOR" SUGGESTED BY THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY (PNAC) WHICH WE HAVE SEEN SOME INSIDE AMERICA WISH FOR, SEARCH FOR TO ALLOW WOULD-BE GLOBALIST THIEVES TO TAKE CONTROL OF AMERICA?  

WHY, AFTER BEING WARNED FOR OVER 30 YEARS NOW, WOULDN'T THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, OR ANYONE, TAKE STEPS TO MAKE CERTAIN THIS CAN'T HAPPEN?  

WHY HASN'T ANYONE SECURED THE GRID, OR EVEN TRIED TO UPGRADE THE GRID SYSTEM?  

WE KNOW IT'S FAILING, HAS BEEN FAILING FOR DECADES, BUT CONGRESS WON'T ALLOCATE FUNDS?  

WHY NOT?  

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE, BUT WHO WILL UNCOVER IT?    

According to the year-long Associated Press investigation, the hackers got:

—User names and passwords that could be used to connect remotely to Calpine's networks, which were being maintained by a data security company. Even if some of the information was outdated, experts say skilled hackers could have found a way to update the passwords and slip past firewalls to get into the operations network. Eventually, they say, the intruders could shut down generating stations, foul communications networks and possibly cause a blackout near the plants.

 

—Detailed engineering drawings of networks and power stations from New York to California — 71 in all — showing the precise location of devices that communicate with gas turbines, boilers and other crucial equipment attackers would need to hack specific plants.

 

—Additional diagrams showing how those local plants transmit information back to the company's virtual cloud, knowledge attackers could use to mask their activity.

 

For example, one map shows how information flows from the Agnews power plant in San Jose, California, near the San Francisco 49ers football stadium, to the company headquarters in Houston.

HOW IMPORTANT IS IT, MAY WE SUPPOSE, TO THE CURRENT CONGRESS AND CURRENT RESIDENT OF THE OVAL OFFICE THAT, IF THE GRID GOES DOWN, OUR ANTIQUATED NUCLEAR FACILITIES GO UP IN "GLOW-IN-THE-DARK" CLOUDS OF RADIOACTIVE SMOKE?

DOESN'T ANYONE THINK ABOUT THAT?

SURE, THEY HAVE BACKUP POWER, BUT NOT FOR MONTHS!

SOME WOULDN'T LAST WEEKS!

LOOK WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FUKUSHIMA, JAPAN'S  DAI'ICHI NUKE FACILITY AFTER ONLY A COUPLE HOURS WITHOUT ELECTRICITY!

Nuclear fuel rods overheated and emergency cooling generators lost power when seawater flooded the buildings. This led to explosions at reactor containment buildings and leaks of nuclear material. All of the emergency response systems failed.

THREE REACTORS MELTED DOWN.
THE PLANT IS STILL LEAKING, ALMOST 5 YEARS LATER!

YEARS BACK, WHEN CHINA WAS OUR SOURCE FOR REPLACEMENT PARTS TO OUR GRID, CHINA SAID IT MIGHT TAKE YEARS TO GET WHAT WE NEEDED TO GET THE GRID BACK UP.

AT LEAST 20 YEARS AGO, SCIENTISTS WARNED CONGRESS THAT ANOTHER CARRINGTON EVENT CAUSED BY A MASSIVE SOLAR FLARE, WOULD MELT THE GRID PERHAPS BEYONG REPAIR AND WE'D HAVE TO START BACK ON SQUARE ONE TO HAVE POWER IN AMERICA.

 "...the big fear is what might happen to the electrical grid, since power surges caused by solar particles could blow out giant transformers.

Such transformers can take a long time to replace, especially if hundreds are destroyed at once, said  Daniel Baker, of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, who is a co-author of a National Research Council report on solar-storm risks.

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's Ed Cliver agrees: "They don't have a lot of these on the shelf," he said.

The eastern half of the U.S. is particularly vulnerable, because the power infrastructure is highly interconnected, so failures could easily cascade like chains of dominoes.
 

"Imagine large cities without power for a week, a month, or a year," Baker said. "The losses could be $1 to $2 trillion, and the effects could be felt for years."

WHAT ARE THE IDIOTS ON THE HILL WAITING FOR?

WHY AREN'T THOSE WHO RUN THESE FACILITIES DOING ANYTHING DIFFERENTLY?

21 DECEMBER 2015 
ABC NEWS

AP  INVESTIGATION   

AGING, FAILING, OUTDATED SYSTEM LEAVES U.S. WIDE OPEN TO CYBER ATTACK.   
About a dozen times in the last decade, sophisticated foreign hackers have gained enough remote access to CONTROL the operations networks that keep the lights on, according to top experts who spoke only on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter.  

The public almost never learns the details about these types of attacks — they're rarer but also more intricate and potentially dangerous than data theft.   

 

Information about the government's response to these hacks is often protected and sometimes classified; many are never even reported to the government.    

 

These intrusions have not caused the kind of cascading blackouts that are feared by the intelligence community. But so many attackers have stowed away in the largely investor-owned systems that run the U.S. electric grid that experts say they likely have the capability to strike at will.   

 

"If the geopolitical situation changes and Iran wants to target these facilities, if they have this kind of information it will make it a lot easier," said Robert M. Lee, a former U.S. Air Force cyber warfare operations officer. "It will also help them stay quiet and stealthy inside."  

 

In 2012 and 2013, in well-publicized attacks, Russian hackers successfully sent and received encrypted commands to U.S. public utilities and power generators; some private firms concluded this was an effort to position interlopers to act in the event of a political crisis.  

 

And the Department of Homeland Security announced about a year ago that a separate hacking campaign, believed by some private firms to have Russian origins, had injected software with malware that allowed the attackers to spy on U.S. energy companies.   

 

The hackers have gained access to an aging, outdated power system. Many of the substations and equipment that move power across the U.S. are decrepit and were never built with network security in mind; hooking the plants up to the Internet over the last decade has given hackers new backdoors in.  

 

NOT WHERE WE OUGHT TO BE ON CYBER SECURITY  

Hundreds of contractors sell software and equipment to energy companies, and attackers have successfully used those outside companies as a way to get inside networks tied to the grid. 

Attributing attacks is notoriously tricky. Neither U.S. officials nor cyber security experts would or could say if the Islamic Republic of Iran was involved in the attack Wallace discovered involving Calpine Corp., a power producer with 82 plants operating in 18 states and Canada.  

 

Private firms have alleged other recent hacks of networks and machinery tied to the U.S. power grid were carried out by teams from within Russia and China, some with governmental support.

Even the Islamic State group is trying to hack American power companies, a top Homeland Security official told industry executives in October.  

 

Homeland Security spokesman SY Lee said that his agency is coordinating efforts to strengthen grid cyber security nationwide and to raise awareness about evolving threats to the electric sector through industry trainings and risk assessments. As Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas acknowledged in an interview, however, "we are not where we need to be" on cyber security.  

 

That's partly because the grid is largely privately owned and has entire sections that fall outside federal regulation, which experts argue leaves the industry poorly defended against a growing universe of hackers seeking to access its networks.  

IRAN DISCOVERED AS HACKERS?  

rom Internet Protocol addresses in Tehran, the hackers had deployed TinyZbot, a Trojan horse-style of software that the attackers used to gain backdoor access to their targets, log their keystrokes and take screen shots of their information. The hacking group, he would find, included members in the Netherlands, Canada, and the United Kingdom.   
 

THE CALPINE BREACH    
 

The AP looked at the vulnerability of the energy grid as part of a yearlong, AP-Associated Press Media Editors examination of the state of the nation's infrastructure.  

 

AP conducted more than 120 interviews and examined dozens of sets of data, government reports and private analyses to gauge whether the industry is prepared to defend against cyber attacks.  

 

The attack involving Calpine is particularly disturbing because the cyber spies grabbed so much, according to interviews and previously unreported documents.   

 

Cyber security experts say the breach began at least as far back as August 2013, and could still be going on today.    

 

Calpine spokesman Brett Kerr said the company's information was stolen from a contractor that does business with Calpine. He said the stolen diagrams and passwords were old — some diagrams dated to 2002 — and presented no threat, though some outside experts disagree.    

 

Kerr would not say whether the configuration of the power plants' operations networks — also valuable information — remained the same as when the intrusion occurred, or whether it was possible the attackers still had a foothold.    

 

Calpine didn't know its information had been compromised until it was informed by Cylance, Kerr said.   

 

Cylance notified the FBI, which warned the U.S. energy sector in an unclassified bulletin last December that a group using Iran-based IP addresses had targeted the industry.  

Iranian U.N. Mission spokesman Hamid Babaei did not return calls or address questions emailed by AP.    

Members of AEP's cyber-security team — housed in the company's Columbus, Ohio, headquarters behind an unmarked door that unlocks with a fingerprint scanner — saw the strange network behavior as soon as it started.  
 

"When you see this (code) attempting to hit thousands of systems outside of the AEP network, that's a 'holy crap' moment," said Sean Parcel, AEP's lead cyber investigator.  

Had CryptoLocker wormed its way into AEP's system, the business and operations networks could have locked up, experts say."   


JUST ONE MORE MAJOR FAIL AND PROOF THAT SUCH THINGS AS "HOMELAND SECURITY" ARE MERE MYTHS...OR, LET'S CALL IT WHAT IT REALLY IS, A LIE.  

JUST ANOTHER LIE.  

SO WHAT, RIGHT?   

NEXT!   

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