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Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated By Spies

US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report

The US electricity grid has been hacked into by Russian and Chinese cyber spies, who seem to be probing for weaknesses, and it looks like they have already inserted malware to disrupt the flow of electricity in the grid.

Communism fell long ago, but those nations that once harbored the philosophies of Marx and Mao have not forgotten that we are still the enemy, despite their outward appearances to the contrary.

Make no mistake, we are still in a cold war of sorts, as the superpowers in the world are still attempting to gain an advantage over each other. As Reagan once said, trust but verify. Today, that means to verify the intentions of our economic and ideological enemies. It applies now just as much as it did in Reagan's time. Reagan helped to bring an end to Communism, but that doesn't mean that Russia and China are our friends now. To the contrary, they are still our competitors, and must be watched through a microscope, lest their adventures should end up putting us at a disadvantage.

Article is here.
 
Re: US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report

A little light on sources.....
Is it the chinese and russian governments, or just some hackers in a coffee shop somewhere?
 
Re: US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report

Personally,

I am a bit uneasy blaming the governments for these attacks, but I am even more uneasy saying the Governments had nothing to do with it. It just would not be smart tactics to have the paper-trail of your hackers lead to your government.

We have to expect these kind of attacks, as these are the tactics of the future.
 
Re: US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report

UtahBill said:
A little light on sources.....
Is it the chinese and russian governments, or just some hackers in a coffee shop somewhere?
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If you had been paying attention to the reports, the exact nature of who it is, is being withheld. So anybody who says it's so and so is guessing. Maybe if you weren't so busy trying to poke holes in people's posts, you'd have picked this up.
 
Re: US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report

Maybe he was just trying to get some facts straight, American, nothing wrong with that.
:roll:
 
Re: US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report

American said:
If you had been paying attention to the reports, the exact nature of who it is, is being withheld. So anybody who says it's so and so is guessing. Maybe if you weren't so busy trying to poke holes in people's posts, you'd have picked this up.
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I'd like to know if it was coffee shop hackers or the governments.
 
Re: US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report

Travelsonic said:
Maybe he was just trying to get some facts straight, American, nothing wrong with that.
:roll:
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That would be a first for this dude. His first response is usually to crucify the OP.
 
Re: US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report

American said:
That would be a first for this dude. His first response is usually to crucify the OP.
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Funny, I don't feel crucified. He brought up a valid point. However, if it WAS hackers in a cyber cafe, they have to be funded by someone, don't they? And funding is typically done by those who have the money to fund projects like that, meaning governments. That would be the response I would use instead of attacking him for bringing up a point.
 
Re: US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report

danarhea said:
And funding is typically done by those who have the money to fund projects like that, meaning governments. That would be the response I would use instead of attacking him for bringing up a point.
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Funding is typically done by those that wish to profit from such an occurence.

From the WSJ

Last year, a senior Central Intelligence Agency official, Tom Donahue, told a meeting of utility company representatives in New Orleans that a cyberattack had taken out power equipment in multiple regions outside the U.S. The outage was followed with extortion demands, he said.
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I think it is more likely that organized crime - of which some could be state sponsored - is the real culprit
 
zimmer said:
There's been a whole lot of penetrating in the last couple months.

.
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If you think this has only bee done in the last few months I have some property in Iraq to sell you cheap.
 
Re: US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report

danarhea said:
However, if it WAS hackers in a cyber cafe, they have to be funded by someone, don't they?
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Not necessarily. Some hackers try to just make a name for themselves.
 
Re: US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report

TheNextEra said:
Not necessarily. Some hackers try to just make a name for themselves.
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Apparantly, it's not anonymous(which makes up the vast majority of internet-cafe users, I'm sure). I just checked 4chan and all the amerifags, at least, are as pissed about this as everyone else here.

:mrgreen:

but on a serious note, I don't think it was just your internet cafe hacker. The report specifcally says "spies", so it would lead me to conclude that they are working for someone, most likely in another country.

Then again, the news has "lied" like this before....
 
Re: US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report

Who thinks that the US isn't trying to hack into China's grid? Anyone think we're not trying or that their grid is impervious to attack? Anyone think this is one sided with us at a disadvantage?
 
Re: US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report

DarkWizard12 said:
but on a serious note, I don't think it was just your internet cafe hacker. The report specifcally says "spies", so it would lead me to conclude that they are working for someone, most likely in another country.

Then again, the news has "lied" like this before....
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Of course they are going to call them spies, even if they are just hackers because spies sounds so much worse than hackers. Of course they may be spies, but I don't trust the government or the media to properly label somebody.

Let's face it, if some U.S. teens hacked into another country's power grid, that country would call them spies as well.
 
chevydriver1123 said:
I wouldn't be too worried since majority of Electrical grids are maned by private companies...
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Unfortunately, it wasn't the private companies that discovered the penetration. The private companies will need to improve their ability to safeguard the systems they run.

From the article you posted:

Many of the intrusions were detected not by the companies in charge of the infrastructure but by U.S. intelligence agencies, officials said. Intelligence officials worry about cyber attackers taking control of electrical facilities, a nuclear power plant or financial networks via the Internet.

Authorities investigating the intrusions have found software tools left behind that could be used to destroy infrastructure components, the senior intelligence official said. He added, "If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on."
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TheNextEra said:
If you think this has only bee done in the last few months I have some property in Iraq to sell you cheap.
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Well, Ok... if there is enough land for a 10 floor structure (above group) and it is located near downtown Baghdad, and you want to get rid of it cheap... let's talk. If price and location are truly cheap, I'll snap it in a NY minute.

Iraq was a war the left voted for twice; it was seen as a possibility in 1998 and necessary after 911.

I don't see where the "penetration" is here, unless you are speaking about the putrid behavior from the Left giving it to our troops and military leadership at every turn.

.
 
donsutherland1 said:
Unfortunately, it wasn't the private companies that discovered the penetration. The private companies will need to improve their ability to safeguard the systems they run.

From the article you posted:
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I think it is quite expensive to have a highly trained group of people that know how to investigate hacking (rather cracking) with sophisticated software and hardware.
 
No system connected to a computer is safe from hacking, period. The networks we rely on today for efficiency and convenience are the same networks that allow this kind of security violation to take place. It's not simply a matter of patching holes, but having a dedicated team constantly surveying the network looking for weaknesses as they are exploited. You can't always know there is a problem until someone tries to take advantage of it.

Surely there must be a way to have a functional electrical grid that does not rely on such a widespread network.
 
Orius said:
No system connected to a computer is safe from hacking, period. The networks we rely on today for efficiency and convenience are the same networks that allow this kind of security violation to take place. It's not simply a matter of patching holes, but having a dedicated team constantly surveying the network looking for weaknesses as they are exploited. You can't always know there is a problem until someone tries to take advantage of it.

Surely there must be a way to have a functional electrical grid that does not rely on such a widespread network.
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The Internet was never designed with security in mind. It was intended as a closed system for the military.
 
American said:
The Internet was never designed with security in mind. It was intended as a closed system for the military.
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And belive me the millitary has all kinds of problems with keeping our net secure. I feel that this is one of the major security fields we will need to be watching in the future and one of the most damaging.
 
American said:
The Internet was never designed with security in mind. It was intended as a closed system for the military.
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A wide area network using existing infrastructure was never truly closed.
 
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