On April 13, 2003, professor rat wrote:
Sparks over US power grid cybersecurity By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus
Strike.
Posted: 11/04/2003 at 23:01 GMT
Strike. Learn to use STANDARD TIME FORMATS, you pathetic ex-con sellout journalist. DD/MM/YYYY is an antiquated european format.
The draft guideline offer a much more detailed prescription for curing the power grid's security ills: "Set dial-out modems to not auto-answer," reads one pointer. "Automatically lock accounts or access paths after a preset number of consecutive invalid password attempts," suggests another.
Assuming Mr. Poulsen is fixating on the aspects of the draft he's most familiar with, it becomes readily apparent that he is still living in 1995.
But Norton also describes the power grid's fractal network of interdependent systems. "There's incredibly variety of equipment, generationally, vendor-wise, because it's kind of been cobbled together as neighborhoods get bigger," he says. "You've got increasingly sophisticated control centers and increasingly sophisticated microprocessor-controlled equipment, and linking them are unencrypted 1200-baud lines."
Someone teach this child about fractals.