Computer Viruses are Another New Worry
It didn't cause what happened but it could've exacerbated what happened. The blackout followed the Aug. 11 Blaster outbreak by just three days.
The Ohio utility that is the chief focus of the blackout investigation, FirstEnergy Corp., is investigating whether the Blaster worm might have caused computer trouble that was described on telephone transcripts as hampering its response to multiple power line failures.
They didn't originally detect a worm or a virus but they are not ruling anything out. The bi-national task force investigating the country's biggest blackout is also looking into the issue.
In January, the "Slammer" Internet worm took down monitoring computers at FirstEnergy's idled Davis-Besse nuclear plant. A subsequent report by the North American Electric Reliability Council said the infection blocked commands that operated other power utilities, although it caused no outages.
In the past, the grid's old electromechanical switches and analog technology made it more or less impervious to computer maladies, Weiss said.
But now, switches and monitoring gear can be upgraded and programmed remotely with software — and that requires a vulnerable connection to a computer network.
In one test they found that a tiny piece of corrupted data could crash a crucial computerized control device that is installed in most grid substations.
Other researchers have figured out how to hack into these devices, known as a remote terminal unit, and command it to trip and reset a breaker.
That would incapacitate a substation, the electricity distribution points for towns and neighborhoods where high-voltage electricity is transformed for local use.
One feared hacking scenario involves changing the settings on substations' programmable circuit breakers. A hacker could lower settings from, say 500 amperes to 200 on some breakers, while raising others to 900.
Normal power usage could trip the 200 amp breakers and take those lines out of service, diverting power and overloading neighboring lines.
With their breakers set at 900 amps - too high to trip - the overloads would cause transformers and other critical equipment to melt down, requiring major repairs that would prolong a blackout.
Some of the most technically advanced relays can be programmed over a telephone modem connection after typing a simple eight-digit password.
Hackers have very little trouble cracking an eight-digit password and finding substation phone lines that connect to these relays can be done with so-called "war dialers," simple PC programs that dial consecutive phone numbers looking for modems.
Researchers are now asking manufacturers to take countermeasures, including programming their control devices to accept calls only from certain phone numbers, or simply disconnecting idle modems.
Like anyone dependent on networked computers for crucial operations, grid operators will be vulnerable to hackers.
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