[cta at hcsin.net: Re: CNN: 'Explores Possibility that Power Outage is Related to Internet Worm']

[Thomas Shaddack]

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote:

>    Somehow I have difficulty believing the these people could be so totally lame
> as to be running mission-critical stuff like this on windoze. Please say it
> isn't true.

The Microsoft salesmen know the coercive sales tactics. The clients'
well-being isn't in their interest; their interest is only a new sale.
Hence in their world Windows are suitable for just about everything. By
exploiting psychological tricks, they are able to convince less
technically capable personnel (eg, the management) about their system's
alleged superiority. Not that different from eg. car dealers.

A friend some time ago complained about having to ditch a Linux webserver
because his company managers did some special deal with Microsoft which
gave them substantially lower prices if they would run ALL systems
exclusively on Windows. But I forgot the details.

> Is the military also now dependant on windoze?

Some time ago there was a widely publicized incident with Windows NT
controlling a battleship. After a crash the ship had to be towed to the
port. From then it's known that NT is an acronym for Needs Towing.

> Bizarre, absolutely bizarre.

And somehow entirely unsurprising.

> And here I thought it was probably caused by people with potato guns
> firing tennis balls filled with concrete, attached to coils of wire cable,
> dropping them across the power lines and transformer stations.

The cable will vaporize at the moment the lightning from the power line
hits it, or it will be too heavy to be brought up by anything reasonable.
(You don't need even a full contact, getting it to the sparking distance
is enough.) That will trigger the breakers and switch the line off for few
seconds. But then the power will be switched on again. Then you need to
short it the second time. The wire you used will vaporize as well, but the
breakers won't switch back on for the second time, claim an error, and an
inspection of the power line is required to find the shortcut cause before
it can be switched back on, as the electronics then considers the short
circuit to be permanent. (I hope I am right here.) Also be aware about the
danger of the step voltage at the moment the lightning from the power line
hits the ground - you don't want to be anywhere too close, so you will
avoid the potato gun and resort to something safer, eg. a suitable rocket
engine.

In Colombia, the rebels routinely "dark" the cities by blowing up the high
voltage masts. If the mast is in a difficult-to-access place, it can take
days to build a replacement.

There are thousands of miles of power lines, good part of them in less
inhabited areas. It is extremely difficult to prevent this kind of attack.
To add insult to injury, the adversary can get ahold of the map of the
power transmission networks rather easily - they are in all kinds of
sources, from tourist maps to maps for pilots, and one can get fairly good
idea about the power feeds to a city by just driving around it with open
eyes. Underground lines exist, but are more expensive, so they are quite
unusual.

However, I'd bet that this affair was a plain old Murphy-based cascade
failure.


On another note, a nice reading about the world of energetics is Arthur
Hailey's "Overload".