South America blackout leaves tens of millions without power

[livingston]

South America blackout leaves tens of millions without power
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The lights were back on Monday across Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay after a huge blackout that affected tens of millions people, but authorities remained in the dark about the cause of the grid collapse and continued to calculate the economic damage.

Argentine President Mauricio Macri promised a thorough investigation into what he called an “unprecedented” outage, one that raised questions about flaws in South America’s power grid, which connects many of the region’s largest countries.
Hunt begins for the cause of huge South American blackout

Energy officials said the results of the investigation would be available in 10 to 15 days, and they could not immediately provide details on the economic impact of the outage, which happened on a Sunday, a day before a national holiday in Argentina.

 

[livingston]

Cyberattacks Make Smart Grids Look Pretty Dumb
Bloomberg Opinion) -- Imagine if your thermostat led to a region-wide power blackout.

It’s a scenario that’s looking increasingly plausible. Argentina isn’t ruling out a cyberattack as the possible cause for the mass outage that affected millions of people in five South American countries over the weekend. Even if that incident turns out to have a more innocent explanation, the U.S. government is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s power grid, the New York Times reported Saturday, citing unnamed officials.

The growing threat from hacking is somewhat inevitable given the way our power systems are changing. Electricity networks are traditionally highly centralized, with limited ability to monitor and control supply and demand in real time, leaving grid operators dependent on forecasting unusual consumption spikes to prevent the system from falling over.

The spread of smart metering and automated control systems has changed that landscape, with more than 10% of global grid investments – equivalent to some $30 billion a year – now dedicated to digital network infrastructure. The grids of the near future are likely to be increasingly decentralized: Owners of domestic refrigerators, air conditioners and industrial facilities will be compensated for switching off to smooth out demand peaks; home, vehicle, and utility-scale batteries will buy cheap electrons and charge up in times of excess generation.
Cyberattacks Make Smart Grids Look Pretty Dumb

 

[BDinPutnam]

Well hell one tree branch in Ohio led to the cascading effect of the '03 blackout in the northeast.

 

[Deplorable Me]

Blackout my ass, they're practicing for the ultra energy conserving New Green Deal.

 

[Robin]

Hope someone down there is taking notes.
Robin

 

[Deplorable Me]

Hope someone down there is taking notes.
Robin

With a pencil, paper and candle.

 

[fresch]

Why is the paper telling people we are attacking Russia? How do they know?
We the people don't need to know every state secret. Like where's Elvis, Kennedy, Hoffa, who is obama (well ok this one).

 

[BDinPutnam]

Why is the paper telling people we are attacking Russia? How do they know?
We the people don't need to know every state secret. Like where's Elvis, Kennedy, Hoffa, who is obama (well ok this one).

These are easy.

Dead.
Dead.
Dead.
Should be signing autographs in Iran.

 

[spat]

Why is the paper telling people we are attacking Russia? How do they know?
We the people don't need to know every state secret. Like where's Elvis, Kennedy, Hoffa, who is obama (well ok this one).

If the paper knows about it to report, it's no secret to our enemies.

If our enemies already know about it, why shouldn't the American people ?

 

[kev74]

Hope someone down there is taking notes.
Robin

I hope someone up here is taking notes.

 

[Acer-m14]

ummm where was the green power backup system LMAO ..

 

[masterswimmer]

I hope everyone up here is taking notes.

FIFY.

 

[livingston]

My thoughts ... Could be a dry run ..... And with that who did it ... we may never know ... Just another reason to prepare for such an event... The fact that it hit several countries is very concerning ...

 

[tirwin1]

If the paper knows about it to report, it's no secret to our enemies.

If our enemies already know about it, why shouldn't the American people ?

Interesting perspective on this topic:
To Hack or Not To Hack

 

[spat]

Interesting perspective on this topic:
To Hack or Not To Hack

If you are not familiar with this one, it gives you an idea what our capabilities really are.

Stuxnet - Wikipedia

For those who don't want to read the whole article, I will sum it up.

We wanted to shut down the Iranian nuclear program. It was protected by the some of strongest cyber defenses available. They ran an "air gap" security for the system, which means it had no physical connection to any outside network. You couldn't hack through the firewall, because the firewall was a literal concrete wall.

So, they developed a worm, that would infect USB drives. It eventually infected nearly 60% of the USB drives in the entire country. Nobody noticed it because it just sat there silently waiting.

Eventually someone plugged one of the infected drives into a computer on the secure uranium enrichment site, and it detected the specific Siemens SCADA software it was targetted at.

It then proceeded to adjust operation of the uranium enrichment centrifuges to a specific operating point that was calculated to run them at a resonance and eventually physically destroy them. It also spoofed the data coming back from the centrifuges to obscure what was happening.

It worked as intended destroying thousands of centrifuges and set the Iranian nuclear program back significantly.

 

[livingston]

Talking about stuxnet
Many water pumping stations are monitored over the internet ... How hard would it be to burn out all the pumps ?... Just throwing that out there ... Lack of electricity is not the only damage that could be thrust upon a country..

 

[spat]

Talking about stuxnet
Many water pumping stations are monitored over the internet ... How hard would it be to burn out all the pumps ?... Just throwing that out there ... Lack of electricity is not the only damage that could be thrust upon a country..

You really want to screw over a country, go after their banking system.

Imagine a hack that sat there for a year silently corrupting backups, then just deleted everyone's balances on everything.