Can someone please explain to me how a hacker can infiltrate an electrical system and possibly cause a failure. I have seen postings about hacker terrorism and am wondering if it truly is possible and is there any way to prevent it?

-- Bruce Clark (Mrmomx6@aol.com), September 07, 1999

Answers

If it's computer controlled and there is access via anything BUT DEDICATED, twisted pair (ANY kind of network does NOT qualify) a "breaker" can get in and do mischief. Dial-ups on unlisted numbers are child's play, regardless of "firewalls". Most firewalls are exit preventives, not entry preventives. Most of the security systems now in use look sophisticated, and truly keep the honest ones honest, and take a while to crack, but they all are crackable. Somewhere there is a chink, and if enough kids have enough time and enough itterations of password stealing routines, they'll get through. Or they'll toss a little something into an e-mail and poof they're in. It's not that hard. Or so I'm told.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), September 07, 1999.

Since power companies are not "rin" by computers, pnly monitored, there should not be any problem with a hacker getting in and causing problems.

First of all, the actual running is analog (harware), not digital (programming).

Second , you hear of people trying to hack into say, the pentagon, ISP's and other information computer, but not a manufacturing process computer, like the ones that build cars etc. It can be donem but most people do not have the kind of knowledge it takes to know how.

It's not hard to get the basic knowledge to understand "word" processing, it takes real brains and dedication to understand formula translation, the software is basically nothing but algorythems(sp).

Anyone out there know FORTRAN?

Ph sure domeone could hack into the power companies billing computer, but the SCADA that holds the status data would probably be too difficult to comprehend and the majority of people do not even know where it "flows". And I ain't gonna tell ya either.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), September 07, 1999.

There was an article in the mainstream press which was discussed here months ago. (good luck finding it.) That article described an NSA exercise where they had some of their hackers attempt to see what mischief they could do, while their security trackers (or whatever) tried to monitor and prevent their attacks. The NSA spokesman (I didn't know there ever was such a thing!) said that the NSA hackers got as far as being able to bring down the entire north American electrical grid, if they'd keyed in the next commands.

I guess these guys would be the best of the best at this sort of thing, and normal bored kids probably could never manage such an attack. But kids are irrelevent. Hacking is serious warfare business, many, most, or maybe all militaries would have developed some sort of offensive infowarfare capacity; armies no longer just meet in some field, march in straight lines at each other then pop home for tea and crumpets. Times have changed, and undoubtedly many armies have pursued infowafare techniques as far as they can, because it's a very powerful and relatively cheap weapon. It's also an obvious weapon for terrorists to utilise too, unfortunately.

Also unfortunately, y2k provides the perfect opportunity for one state to attack another*, because they could do it without being blamed for it, and without the guarantee of retaliation, because the victims would probably think it was just y2k. Conversely, A country's systems might be seriously damaged by y2k, and the army dudes might not immediatly be able to tell if that was y2k or really an infowarfare attack, which could conceivably heighten tension and suspicion between countries that are on edge with each other. (and I think there might be one or two of those in January! :~( )

Military systems would mostly be somewhat protected from infowarfare, but I've got a suspicion that infrastructure systems probably haven't been protected to the same degree.

Sweet dreams.

*(I don't mean Wyoming's gonna take out Delaware, I just like to distinguish between the people of a country and the State, which is the guys who wage wars, amongst other things.)

-- number six (iam_not_a_number@hotmail.com), September 07, 1999.

When the BLAME GAME starts, as it assuredly will, ALL (maybe a few will accept responsibility) in responsible positions will be looking for somewhere to SHIFT the blame. the ground work is now being laid to accomplish this task.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), September 07, 1999.

The finger pointing brigade is warming up already...

-- no talking please (breadlines@soupkitchen.gov), September 07, 1999.

Ray and notalkingplease,

They're not going to take the rap, the bastards!

"Cyberterrorism" my eye...

Liberty

-- Liberty (liberty@theready.now), September 07, 1999.

Just spray alot of squirrels with water and turn them lose...alot simplier than hacking. Terrorism very easy with substations.

-- Moore Dinty moore (not@thistime.com), September 07, 1999.

hmmmph!, why do I bother.

-- number six (iam_not_a_number@hotmail.com), September 08, 1999.

Dinty Moore, ROFLMAO! Not very sophisticated, but it gets the job done, and it IS y2k compliant.

Number six (I was addicted to The Prisoner--great show),

Good points. From reading some of our military's websites, it appears that they are quite concerned about cyberterrorism and the infrastructure.

-- RUOK (RUOK@yesiam.com), September 08, 1999.