Single Point of Weakness is in the Works.Thank you Major Tom.

[Thomas Shaddack]

> Strike.  Learn to use STANDARD TIME FORMATS, you pathetic ex-con
> sellout journalist.  DD/MM/YYYY is an antiquated european format.

...and MM/DD/YYYY is an antiquitated American format.

STANDARD time format is ISO-8601 compliant, YYYY-MM-DD.

Another acceptable way is DD MMM YYYY in any order, where the format of
the fields automatically and unambiguously determines meaning.

Peddlers of other formats should be slowly tortured on public TV as the
warning for the others. I'd be delighted to watch.

> 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.

You won't believe how many people who should know what IT security is
about still live somewhere between 1900 and 1950.

> > 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.

And because the vendors aren't required to disclose the documentation nor
at least the interfaces, half[1] of the technology is a proprietary piece
of shit that nobody knows how it works, and - worse - nobody can expect
how it will fail.

> > "You've got increasingly sophisticated control centers and
> > increasingly sophisticated microprocessor-controlled equipment, and
> > linking them are unencrypted 1200-baud lines."

True. And the cables are accessible to everyone who knows how to crawl
into a manhole. Not even talking about the atrocious security of wireless
links.

> Someone teach this child about fractals.

Why fractals?

One comment I would have is that the growing intelligence of equipment
should mandate fail-safe operation, refusal to perform commands that would
put the node and its surrounding area to dangerous situation. Eg, it's
better to cause traffic jam by setting all lights to red (or, even better,
blinking yellow, which means here that the traffic lights aren't
controlled) when a command comes to set greens in unsafe combination, than
to obey the command. This way, the growing CPU power will be at least used
to maintain sane behavior of the equipment in unpredictable cases and even
in case of an active hostile attack.

[1] I am a closet optimist.