Otter
Nothing to see here
There are two explanations for the massive Aug. 14, 2003 power failure. The official version, which the Department of Energy was scheduled to release around mid-October 2003, was expected to retell the story that we had already been told. A critical interconnection point in the FirstEnergy electric grid in Ohio failed. What should have been an easily contained local power failure cascaded east, causing more than $1 billion in damage in eight states and Ontario.
The second version is that terrorists successfully staged a digital Pearl Harbor.
Skeptics in a skeptical business, PM instinctively puts conspiracy theories on the same shelf with dire Y2K predictions. Having covered major power outages before, PM also understands the vulnerability of the system that interconnects power plants with millions of customers. And with more than a dozen PM staff stranded in midtown Manhattan on that muggy summer night, we wanted to believe President George W. Bush when he dismissed a terrorist connection. We remained so convinced that at first we ignored as bravado an Al Qaeda claim that they had been behind the outage. And then we learned about Lt. Col. Bradley K. Ashley.
Ashley's connection to the outage began several years ago, when he was marked as a rising star and posted to the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Moving up in the ranks depends upon getting your ticket punched in the right places. For an Air Force officer, being sent to the Air War College is comparable to having your company pack you off for an expense-paid Harvard MBA.
Threat Matrix
One of the objectives of the Air War College is to train officers to accurately analyze military threats, which Ashley did in a report on Al Qaeda and cyberterrorism. "There is an accepted model within the Department of Defense that assesses threat based on several factors," Ashley writes. The threat-analysis techniques developed by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) rate a threat on five criteria: existence, capabilities, intentions, history and targeting. The threat scale ranges from negligible to critical, depending upon which of those five factors are present.
The most striking feature of the DIA threat-assessment matrix is that its criteria for categorizing threats are far stricter than those of the CIA or FBI. An organization is considered a "medium" threat after it has established a history of attacks. The DIA is not concerned with individuals who make threats. It focuses its attention on organizations that are threats.
To assess Al Qaeda's potential as a cyberthreat, Ashley pored over reports of the contents of computers captured in Afghanistan as well as information gathered through prisoner interrogations. In each of the five critical areas, Al Qaeda activities merited a "yes" score on the DIA threat matrix. "The overall assessment of the Al Qaeda cyberthreat is critical," Ashley concludes. "We know terrorists are pursuing this capability. Major cyberterror attacks against America will occur. It is a matter of when, not if."
A chilling assessment to be sure. And Ashley went even further when he identified the trapdoor through which Al Qaeda would attack the power grid.
The SCADA Connection
The nation's power system has thousands of not-so-secret trapdoors called supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) devices. "SCADA systems allow utility companies to monitor and direct equipment at unmanned facilities from a central location," Ashley explains.
In the past decade, SCADA devices have become the workhorses for public utilities. More than 3 million SCADA devices are in use around the world today, says Ashley. Chiefly, they replace technicians for the routine tasks of meter reading and switch flipping. Their arrival has made it possible for utilities to maintain a high level of power reliability and at the same time reduce costs. To further reduce costs, SCADA systems are designed to send and receive information over the Internet or via radio links. This is the first of their two weak links.
The second and more serious security concern is that SCADA devices are a truly global technology. For example, a company that provided SCADA expertise for FirstEnergy did similar work for the Egyptian Electricity Authority. It is a normal, legal and perfectly innocent business relationship. But it is also the sort of connection that makes intelligence experts worry, and those familiar with Ashley's investigation cringe.
"Information about SCADA devices and hacking them was found on Al Qaeda computers seized in raids in Afghanistan," says Ashley. "Al Qaeda prisoners have informed interrogators about their intent to use these methods to attack the U.S." This is hardly surprising since all of the "Axis of Evil" countries--Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria--have both access to SCADA devices and an in-depth understanding of the technology.
Dry Run
The files of the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), an industry group created after the infamous 1964 Northeast blackout, suggest that a cyberattack dry run took place in January 2003.
According to Charles E. Noble, head of Information Security for ISO New England, a NERC member that operates transmission lines, some sort of probing attack may have occurred during the appearance of the so-called "SQL Slammer Worm" that disrupted many Internet services. It also affected two unnamed utilities. "Both entities lost their ability to execute bulk electric system control from their primary control centers for several hours," Noble says.
NERC took the episode seriously enough to ask its members to approve emergency rules that require background checks on employees with access to SCADA devices.
Coincidence or conspiracy? Admittedly, the facts are circumstantial. But for a nation built on electric power, the risk of ignoring them might one day prove catastrophic.
The second version is that terrorists successfully staged a digital Pearl Harbor.
Skeptics in a skeptical business, PM instinctively puts conspiracy theories on the same shelf with dire Y2K predictions. Having covered major power outages before, PM also understands the vulnerability of the system that interconnects power plants with millions of customers. And with more than a dozen PM staff stranded in midtown Manhattan on that muggy summer night, we wanted to believe President George W. Bush when he dismissed a terrorist connection. We remained so convinced that at first we ignored as bravado an Al Qaeda claim that they had been behind the outage. And then we learned about Lt. Col. Bradley K. Ashley.
Ashley's connection to the outage began several years ago, when he was marked as a rising star and posted to the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Moving up in the ranks depends upon getting your ticket punched in the right places. For an Air Force officer, being sent to the Air War College is comparable to having your company pack you off for an expense-paid Harvard MBA.
Threat Matrix
One of the objectives of the Air War College is to train officers to accurately analyze military threats, which Ashley did in a report on Al Qaeda and cyberterrorism. "There is an accepted model within the Department of Defense that assesses threat based on several factors," Ashley writes. The threat-analysis techniques developed by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) rate a threat on five criteria: existence, capabilities, intentions, history and targeting. The threat scale ranges from negligible to critical, depending upon which of those five factors are present.
The most striking feature of the DIA threat-assessment matrix is that its criteria for categorizing threats are far stricter than those of the CIA or FBI. An organization is considered a "medium" threat after it has established a history of attacks. The DIA is not concerned with individuals who make threats. It focuses its attention on organizations that are threats.
To assess Al Qaeda's potential as a cyberthreat, Ashley pored over reports of the contents of computers captured in Afghanistan as well as information gathered through prisoner interrogations. In each of the five critical areas, Al Qaeda activities merited a "yes" score on the DIA threat matrix. "The overall assessment of the Al Qaeda cyberthreat is critical," Ashley concludes. "We know terrorists are pursuing this capability. Major cyberterror attacks against America will occur. It is a matter of when, not if."
A chilling assessment to be sure. And Ashley went even further when he identified the trapdoor through which Al Qaeda would attack the power grid.
The SCADA Connection
The nation's power system has thousands of not-so-secret trapdoors called supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) devices. "SCADA systems allow utility companies to monitor and direct equipment at unmanned facilities from a central location," Ashley explains.
In the past decade, SCADA devices have become the workhorses for public utilities. More than 3 million SCADA devices are in use around the world today, says Ashley. Chiefly, they replace technicians for the routine tasks of meter reading and switch flipping. Their arrival has made it possible for utilities to maintain a high level of power reliability and at the same time reduce costs. To further reduce costs, SCADA systems are designed to send and receive information over the Internet or via radio links. This is the first of their two weak links.
The second and more serious security concern is that SCADA devices are a truly global technology. For example, a company that provided SCADA expertise for FirstEnergy did similar work for the Egyptian Electricity Authority. It is a normal, legal and perfectly innocent business relationship. But it is also the sort of connection that makes intelligence experts worry, and those familiar with Ashley's investigation cringe.
"Information about SCADA devices and hacking them was found on Al Qaeda computers seized in raids in Afghanistan," says Ashley. "Al Qaeda prisoners have informed interrogators about their intent to use these methods to attack the U.S." This is hardly surprising since all of the "Axis of Evil" countries--Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria--have both access to SCADA devices and an in-depth understanding of the technology.
Dry Run
The files of the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), an industry group created after the infamous 1964 Northeast blackout, suggest that a cyberattack dry run took place in January 2003.
According to Charles E. Noble, head of Information Security for ISO New England, a NERC member that operates transmission lines, some sort of probing attack may have occurred during the appearance of the so-called "SQL Slammer Worm" that disrupted many Internet services. It also affected two unnamed utilities. "Both entities lost their ability to execute bulk electric system control from their primary control centers for several hours," Noble says.
NERC took the episode seriously enough to ask its members to approve emergency rules that require background checks on employees with access to SCADA devices.
Coincidence or conspiracy? Admittedly, the facts are circumstantial. But for a nation built on electric power, the risk of ignoring them might one day prove catastrophic.
You need power for that. Why go through the trouble of attempting to poison our water when all you have to do is cut power long enough for it all to turn into poo stew?
