
Actions needed to address cybersecurity risks facing the electric grid (2019) [pdf] - notadog
https://www.gao.gov/assets/710/701079.pdf
======
motohagiography
Worked on this problem 10 years ago, power distribution companies were sleepy
enterprise environments with workforces who were just not equipped to respond
to internet technologies, let alone threats. Even the lightweight requirements
of NERC/CIP were treated as alien. The best security was in the smart meter
infrastructure, which was designed around redundancy and combating fraud, but
certainly not national security.

I don't think this is something we fix, it's something we evolve and move on
from. My impression was the only real future relative to a grid security
crisis is in storage and renewables, with more localized generation. The
alternative is basically nationalization.

~~~
dreamcompiler
I worked on it back then too. As you say, the power companies have neither the
money, the talent, nor the will to fix the problem. Getting a private company
to spend money to prevent a hypothetical bad thing is always a tough sell, and
most of the US grid is operated by private companies.

~~~
javajosh
This could be fixed by a dramatic demonstration. Pick a medium sized
metropolitan area, and authorize pentesters to try and take down the grid to
the point of a (short) blackout - and make sure people know how it happened,
and that a foreign adversary could do it to us.

(Perhaps an occasional electrical blackout is good for a society in the same
way an occasional fast is good for a human body).

~~~
myrion
This was done a few years back in Switzerland by national television. With the
approval of everyone involved, a pentester was supposed to shut down the
street lights in a medium-sized town.

The pentester got in, got to the correct controls and "failed" because the UI
bugged out. It was rather funny to see the journalist/moderator be relieved,
while the rep from the energy company and the security specialist both clearly
knew that that was sheer luck and with a little more time the pentester
could've gotten around the bug too.

Edit after checking the story again: The hacker thought he found the main
control but was wrong and only turned the lights off in a tiny side street. So
it did work and the "bug"/"luck" was that the UI was so confusing that the
attacker got it wrong :D

------
bransonf
This is one of those things that I hear the security community talking about a
lot, but it has very little mainstream traction.

This actually surprises me because I would intuit that people would be drawn
to hysterics about massive grid failures. Look at what happened in New York
City.

And there are many smaller things that get even less consideration. Like the
Tesla Powerwall Hack [0]

Either some big incident is going to happen that makes us shape up real quick,
or we’re going to have a little foresight and proactively upgrade the security
of our critical infrastructure.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21610981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21610981)

~~~
arkadiyt
The senate passed a bill to study moving various electrical digital systems
back to analog/manual control:

[https://www.utilitydive.com/news/senate-passes-
cybersecurity...](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/senate-passes-
cybersecurity-bill-to-decrease-grid-digitization-move-toward/557959/)

------
basicplus2
It is poor decision making putting power systems on the internet.

All power companies have end to end land access and already have scada etc
physical links between all switchyards and can run their own microwave links
where necessary so no need for ANY infrustructure to be accecible from the
internet.

Its lazy cheap decision making.

------
Stierlitz
Have they ever given consideration to not connecting the Electric Grid to the
Internet?

~~~
generatorguy
How would I turn the power back on when it goes out? It would be a 6 hour
drive for me to the power plant. I’ll take my odds with the VPN and satellite
internet connection! If someone wants to cause an outage they can drive their
car in to a power pole, have an earthquake drop rocks off a bank and crush the
pen stocks, have a river change its course and take out 10 poles, send little
animals on to the insulators to cause short circuits, have branches fall on
the power lines, have droughts make the power plant run out of water... all
those things already happened. if some nerd hacks in to my PLC they can’t do
anything worse than I’ve already done! Someone physically breaking in to the
building could cause a lot more damage, they could just burn it down!!

~~~
cheunste
> send little animals on to the insulators to cause short circuits

You don't even need to do that as it happens organically. At my company, we
had a comms outage to a wind farm for several days (and the outage was wide
enough where even surrounding wind farms outside of my company were affected)
and just two days ago, the LEC (Frontier) discovered a bird build a nest in
one of the junction boxes which links up to all the plants. All of this
happened in a span of five days or so.

------
jamestimmins
Somewhat related, but the book Countdown to Zero Day is about both the Stuxnet
worm and the potential for digital attacks on infrastructure. Very good read
and intro to the topic.
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KEPLC08/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KEPLC08/)

~~~
ideonode
There's actually a more recent book, Sandworm, which is specifically about
cyberattacks on the power grid (in Ukraine). Recommended.

------
gHosts
Sadly it looks like they have won so comprehensively.... they have stopped
boasting...

[https://cybersquirrel1.com/](https://cybersquirrel1.com/)

The cybersquirrels have won.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
This is my favourite:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150827145912/https://au.news.y...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150827145912/https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/regional/gascoyne/a/25996725/sheeps-
head-dropped-by-eagle-blamed-for-power-outage/)

I remember reading a commentary on the cybersquirrel1 site introducing this
"event" along the lines of: "In one of our more unusual operations..."

What this site beautifully illustrates is the entirely lax physical security
of power substations and other distribution infrastructure that hundreds or
thousands of households depend on. A distributed, coordinated human effort
could destroy enough infrastructure to cause multiple days if not weeks of no
electricity for a significant area. The kind of damage that would require the
infrastructure to need rebuilding from scratch, or close to it.

