EoW January 2014

Transatlantic Cable

† But Gerry W Cauley, the president and chief executive of NERC, did provide a few details. The exercise resulted in seven “deaths” of police o cers, re ghters, and utility workers who showed up to investigate reports of problems at substations or power lines and were shot by attackers still on the scene. In all, there were 150 “casualties,” Mr Cauley told the Times . Attempts to restore equipment and get the lights back on were stymied by police o cers who locked down the locations because of “active shooters.” Drill participants were more reticent, probably for reasons having to do with the vulnerability of their sites, chosen by NERC. While the stated purpose of the drill was to identify areas that need improvement, the companies involved were assured that their performance would not be held up to public scrutiny. † An o cial of Southwestern Electric Power Co, which serves parts of Louisiana, Arkansas and eastern Texas, did speak candidly with Mr Wald. A power plant and a transformer came under staged attack with guns and bombs, and 108,000 of the company’s 520,000 customers lost power. “There were certainly surprises for us,” said Venita McCellon-Allen, the president and chief operating o cer of a company which has conducted its own preparedness exercises. “I sat up straight in my chair.” Most of the company personnel on GridEx II assignment were at a control centre in Shreveport, Louisiana, but were in contact with the corporate parent, American Electric Power, in Columbus, Ohio. By the end of the exercise, 20,000 Southwestern Electric customers were still in the dark. The parent company got hit harder. Power was knocked out for an additional 162,000 of its customers, and one employee was killed. “It was more severe than anything we’ve drilled,” Ms McCellon-Allen told the Times . Radio spectrum pollution: “every day, all the time, every place in the United States” “While most radio noise appears manageable at this point... I think the wireless industry should heed the potential for worsening spectrum pollution issues. It would be a shame if the proliferation of wireless devices and duelling technologies battling over chunks of spectrum eventually turns the Internet of Things into the Interference of Things.” Discussing radio interference, Tammy Parker, the editor of FierceWirelessTech , noted that – with skyrocketing numbers of devices accessing radio spectrum for communications and other Telecom

Energy

Just a test: federal o cials and utility executives hold a drill in knocking out power lines and computers across America “In this unprecedented continental-scale war game to determine how prepared the nation is for a cyber attack, tens of millions of Americans were in simulated darkness. Hundreds of transmission lines and transformers were declared damaged or destroyed, and the engineers were rushing to assess computers that were, for the purposes of the drill, tearing their system apart.” The mid-autumn event described by energy reporter Matthew L Wald in the New York Times set nearly 10,000 electrical engineers, cyber security specialists, utility executives, and FBI agents to grappling over 48 hours with an unseen “enemy.” Trying to turn out the lights across America, the enemy injected computer viruses into grid control systems, bombed transformers and substations, and knocked out power lines by the dozen. (“Attack Ravages Power Grid. [Just a Test]),” 14 th November) The drill, organised and conducted by North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC), a Washington-based non-pro t entity, featured varying degrees of simulation. Without taking over any actual operating equipment or interrupting consumer services, the organisers mounted “denial of service attacks” in which hackers ooded a computer connected to the Internet with so many messages that it buckled under the load. In reality, of course, banks and other companies have su ered such attacks. From a location in suburban Washington, NERC deployed a crew of about 40 people to lead the exercise, announcing new attacks and other developments. At a second undisclosed spot, also in suburban Washington, at the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security and Communications Integration Centre, specialists took calls from electric industry technicians and operators to assist in dealing with the cyber attacks. Participants at 210 utility companies across North America responded to developments as reported to them by drill managers. Most of the companies are in the US, but some were Canadian and Mexican utilities integrated into the American grid. Royal Canadian Mounted Police o cials also took part. Mr Wald noted that analysis of a much smaller drill two years ago (GridEx, for Grid Exercise) found that participants were good at communicating in an emergency with their neighbours, “electrically speaking,” but not with national organisations like NERC, making it hard to get an overview of what was happening. How well they did this time, in GridEx II, will take some time to evaluate.

Image: www.bigstockphoto.com Photographer Zsolt Ercsel

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January 2014