OT: Cyberattacks Raise Alarm for U.S. Power Grid

My main problem with this as a cyber attack is that it was found on a single laptop that was not even tied to anything operationally. So, all the Ruskies could have done at this point, is steal one person's photos. I'd like to see a little more about this and especially the look at other utilties this will trigger.

I am sure if you call DHS they will be happy to share such classified information with you.....

It doesn't take much to bring down the grid - as the northeastern blackout of August 2003 proved - link below.

If the terrorist hackers were to have some additional irons-in-the-fire - they could prevent the orderly restoration. If this outage happened in freezing February rather than beautiful August - the restoration and subsequent chaos would be far far worse. John T.

Yeah but it at least takes a computer with access to the grid to bring the grid down by computer.

According to news reports the laptop was not connected to the grid, which doesn't mean it does not connect to administrative networks where an intruder could obtain valuable intelligence on infiltrating the grid.

A professional intruder goes to great lengths to leave the smallest of footprints when they break into a system. Finding the malware on one machine is more than enough to indicate the system has been compromised.

Why does it have to trigger other utilities? If the malware simply gives the intruder access to the workstation and then access to mission critical information, that is the equivalent of a jackpot for the Russians.

It would seem to me that if the US and/or Israel could destroy hundreds of centrifuges in a highly secured Iranian nuclear weapons facility, it would not be too hard for foreign enemies to do similar to a civilian power plant.

If it doesn't trigger other utilities to go lookign for it....

Sorry, I do not understand your point, would you care to elaborate?

One doesn't need SCADA related code or a KillDisk trojan just to steal photos.