With the continuation of Solar Maximum, #SolarMax - Solar Flares and EMP's or just random accidents could actually be a Disaster for our Power Grid.
Say what you will about Drills, we will be discussing Blackout Preparedness on USAEBN Radio:
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Stay Informed.
#EMP #SolarFlare #CME #USAEBN #NebShipShophttp://madtownpreppers.blogspot.com/2013/06/shield-act-to-protect-america-from-emp.html |
"A National Academy of Sciences report
last year said that terrorists could cause broad hardship for months
with physical attacks on hard-to-replace components. An emerging effort led in part by R. James Woolsey,
a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is gearing up to
pressure state legislatures to force utilities to protect equipment
against an electromagnetic pulse, which could come from solar activity
or be caused by small nuclear weapons exploded at low altitude, frying
crucial components."
As Worries Over the Power Grid Rise, a Drill Will Simulate a Knockout Blow
New York City during a
blackout in 2003. More than 150 companies and groups will take part in a
drill that will simulate attacks on the power grid. Frank Franklin II/Associated Press
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: August 16, 2013
WASHINGTON — The electric grid, as government and private experts
describe it, is the glass jaw of American industry. If an adversary
lands a knockout blow, they fear, it could black out vast areas of the
continent for weeks; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline, diesel fuel
and fresh food; shut down communications; and create disruptions of a
scale that was only hinted at by Hurricane Sandy and the attacks of
Sept. 11.
This is why thousands of utility workers, business executives, National
Guard officers, F.B.I. antiterrorism experts and officials from
government agencies in the United States, Canada
and Mexico are preparing for an emergency drill in November that will simulate physical attacks and cyberattacks that could take down large sections of the power grid.
and Mexico are preparing for an emergency drill in November that will simulate physical attacks and cyberattacks that could take down large sections of the power grid.
They will practice for a crisis unlike anything the real grid has ever
seen, and more than 150 companies and organizations have signed up to
participate.
“This is different from a hurricane that hits X, Y and Z counties in the
Southeast and they have a loss of power for three or four days,” said
the official in charge of the drill, Brian M. Harrell of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, known as NERC. “We really want to go beyond that.”
One goal of the drill, called GridEx II, is to explore how governments would react as the loss of the grid crippled the supply chain for everyday necessities.
“If we fail at electricity, we’re going to fail miserably,” Curt Hébert,
a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said at a
recent conference held by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Mr. Harrell said that previous exercises were based on the expectation
that electricity “would be up and running relatively quick” after an
attack.
Now, he said, the goal is to “educate the federal government on what
their expectations should or shouldn’t be.” The industry held a smaller
exercise two years ago in which 75 utilities, companies and agencies
participated, but this one will be vastly expanded and will be carried
out in a more anxious mood.
Most of the participants will join the exercise from their workplaces,
with NERC, in Washington, announcing successive failures. One example,
organizers say, is a substation break-in that officials initially think
is an attempt to steal copper. But instead, the intruder uses a USB
drive to upload a virus into a computer network.
The drill is part of a give-and-take in the past few years between the
government and utilities that has exposed the difficulties of securing
the electric system.
The grid is essential for almost everything, but it is mostly controlled
by investor-owned companies or municipal or regional agencies.
Ninety-nine percent of military facilities rely on commercial power,
according to the White House.
The utilities play down their abilities, in comparison with the
government’s. “They have the intelligence operation, the standing army,
the three-letter agencies,” said Scott Aaronson, senior director of
national security policy at the Edison Electric Institute, the trade
association of investor-owned utilities. “We have the grid operations
expertise.”
That expertise involves running 5,800 major power plants and 450,000
miles of high-voltage transmission lines, monitored and controlled by a
staggering mix of devices installed over decades. Some utilities use
their own antique computer protocols and are probably safe from hacking —
what the industry calls “security through obscurity.”
But others rely on Windows-based control systems that are common to many
industries. Some of them run on in-house networks, but computer
security experts say they are not confident that all the connections to
the public Internet have been discovered and secured. Many may be
vulnerable to software — known as malware — that can disable the systems
or destroy their ability to communicate, leaving their human operators
blind about the positions of switches, the flows of current and other
critical parameters. Experts say a sophisticated hacker could also
damage hard-to-replace equipment.
In an effort to draw utilities and the government closer, the industry recently established the Electricity Sub-Sector Coordinating Council, made up of high-level executives, to meet with federal officials. The first session is next month.
Preparation for the November drill comes as Congress is debating laws
that could impose new standards to protect the grid from cyberattacks,
but many in the industry, some of whom would like such rules, doubt that
they can pass.
The drill is also being planned as conferences, studies and even works
of fiction are raising near-apocalyptic visions of catastrophes
involving the grid.
A National Academy of Sciences report
last year said that terrorists could cause broad hardship for months
with physical attacks on hard-to-replace components. An emerging effort led in part by R. James Woolsey,
a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is gearing up to
pressure state legislatures to force utilities to protect equipment
against an electromagnetic pulse, which could come from solar activity
or be caused by small nuclear weapons exploded at low altitude, frying
crucial components.
An attack using an electromagnetic pulse is laid out in extensive detail in the novel “One Second After,” published in 2009 and endorsed by Newt Gingrich. In another novel, “Gridlock,”
published this summer and co-written by Byron L. Dorgan, the former
senator from North Dakota, a rogue Russian agent working for Venezuela
and Iran helps hackers threaten the grid. In the preface, Mr. Dorgan
says such an attack could cause 10,000 times as much devastation as the
terrorists’ strikes on Sept. 11, 2001.
Despite the growing anxiety, the government and the private sector have
had trouble coordinating their grid protection efforts. The utility
industry argues that the government has extensive information on threats
but keeps it classified. Government officials concede the problem, and
they have suggested that some utility executives get security
clearances. But with hundreds of utilities and thousands of executives,
it cannot issue such clearances fast enough. And the industry would like
to be instantly warned when the government identifies Internet servers
that are known to be sources of malware.
Another problem is that the electric system is so tightly integrated
that a collapse in one spot, whether by error or intent, can set off a
cascade, as happened in August 2003, when a power failure took a few
moments to spread from Detroit to New York.
Sometimes utility engineers and law enforcement officials also seem to
speak different languages. In his book “Protecting Industrial Control
Systems From Electronic Threats,” Joseph Weiss, an engineer and
cybersecurity expert, recounted a meeting between electrical engineers
and the F.B.I. in 2008. When an F.B.I. official spoke at length about
I.E.D.’s, he was referring to improvised explosive devices, but to the
engineers the abbreviation meant intelligent electronic devices.
And experts fear government-sponsored hacking. Michael V. Hayden,
another former C.I.A. director, speaking at the Bipartisan Policy Center
conference, said that the Stuxnet virus, which disabled some of Iran’s
centrifuges for enriching uranium, might invite retaliation.
“In a time of peace, someone just used a cyberweapon to destroy another nation’s critical infrastructure,” he said.
“Ouch.”
A version of this article appeared in print on August 17, 2013, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: As Worries Over the Power Grid Rise, a Drill Will Simulate a Knockout Blow.
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