[Lowfer] PLC Interference

[Mike Staines]

Jay:

Didn't see your note on the reflector, found it in someone else's reply.

> > Don't think the terrorists are out to inconvenience americans with power
> > outages and the like. Their end goal is to kill as many americans
> > as possible.

- SNIP-
> > I would think that a terrorist computer whiz, given months or years,
> > whose only mission in life is to hack into a specific computer
> system would
> > have a high likelyhood of getting the job done. What do you think?

Oh, I agree. I did not send my original post to imply that terrorists *may*
have been involved with the blackout but, rather, to say that there is
evidence that computer viruses have crept into the computer systems of vital
infrastructures and that any 13 year old could potentially write a virus
that, unintentionally to the writer, causes massive disruption.

I don't know why the links didn't work but I will cut and paste relevant
parts of the stories:

Quoting the AP:
---------------
The virus infected the computer system at CSX Corp.'s Jacksonville, Fla.,
headquarters, shutting down signaling, dispatching and other systems at
about 1:15 a.m. EDT, CSX spokesman Adam Hollingsworth said.

"The cause was believed to be a worm virus similar to those that have
infected the systems of other major companies and agencies in recent days,"
Hollingsworth said.

The signaling outage briefly affected the entire CSX system, which covers 23
states east of the Mississippi River.

A derivative of "Blaster" brought down Air Canada's check-in systems
Tuesday.

"Most of the delays are in the 15 to 30-minute range on trains that travel
through CSX territory," Stessel said.

Ten Amtrak trains were affected in the morning, Stessel said. Trains between
Pittsburgh and Florence, S.C. were halted because of dark signals and one
regional Amtrak train from Richmond, Va., to Washington and New York was
delayed for more than two hours. Long-distance trains were delayed between
four and six hours.

More than a dozen commuter trains in the Washington area were canceled.
------------------

Again, quoting the AP regarding a similar problem at the maligned
FirstEnergy:
------------------
CLEVELAND - A virus infected FirstEnergy Corp.'s computers in late January
and disabled a data system at its shuttered Davis-Besse nuclear plant, the
company said Wednesday.

The "Slammer" worm was first discovered in the company's main computer
system and then at the plant along Lake Erie, Davis-Besse spokesman Richard
Wilkins said. The virus knocked out other programs, but Wilkins said he did
not know which ones.

The computer worm infected the nuclear plant's computer for a few hours
before it was detected and taken offline for repair, Wilkins said.


"Normally that computer system is isolated from the Internet," he said.
"However, it was linked to an off-site vendor and a virus got in."

---------

I know that we (I) are (am) getting way off topic now but I wanted to point
out, as part of other threads here, that all the best protections in the
world break down as soon as you allow or justify one little crack in your
defenses. And given these stories, it is not inconceivable that a virus
*might* have been involved.

These are the stories that used to keep me up at night when I used to work
in the Security industry. Now my biggest problem is making sure that
Breakfast is ready when the guests request it.

Mike
wa1ptc