U.S. nuclear plants hacked

I've been watching this for the past few hours tickle down the media but haven't seen it ok here yet and a search for "hacked" yielded nothing on this.

www.businessinsider.com...

But the hacks have raised red flags for investigators who worry Russia may be gearing up to levy an attack against the US power grid. If that were the case, it would fit into a pattern adopted by Russia in the past, particularly as it relates to Ukraine.

In 2015, a massive cyberattack leveled against the country's power grid cut electricity to almost 250,000 Ukrainians. Cybersecurity experts linked the attack to IP addresses associated with Russia.

Fingers are being pointed at Russia. Almost immediately after the incident, Russia was being blamed. Most of you realize, hackers are intelligent enough to use proxies and VPNs to cover their tracks so I don't want to devolve this into a blame/defend Russia thread.

Instead, please consider that today could've been the day. If you like doomporn, I suggest looking at American blackout documentary or read "one second after". Our electrical grid has long been the Achilles's heel, a successful attack would kill hundreds of millions and if blamed on Russia would definitely start a world war.

Consider your family's wellbeing: food, water, security, medicine. I'm not here to suggest methods of securing these, because there are too many variables, but if today was the day, how long would you last.

Take care of yourselves. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

a reply to: Virole

Maybe it was N Korea?

OR China....

It wouldnt surprise me, either way can we really know who did this?

Hm, who again is responsible for the backdoors companies have to build in there software?

Wasn´t that the NSA?

So, the former US hacked itself...

a reply to: Virole

Mosquitoes always bite around full moon. Let's hope its just a mosquito.

Someone is not happy with Trump making friends with Russia ?
Inside job to blame Trumps new friend perhaps ?

a reply to: Virole

Our electrical grid has long been the Achilles's heel, a successful attack would kill hundreds of millions and if blamed on Russia would definitely start a world war. 

Kill hundreds of millions?!?

How many people do you think live in the U.S.?

I could see some people dying and a huge inconvenience but to say hundreds of millions would die is a bit of an exaggeration.

Edit - I think the population is somewhere between 300 and 350 million. I doubt if an attack on the power grid would kill off half the U.S.

a reply to: Virole

Fingers are being pointed at Russia. Almost immediately after the incident, Russia was being blamed.

Obviously. I expect nothing less.

Let me guess, this time they used cyrillic keyboards and names famous russian figures as handles, too?

a reply to: Yourmomsentme

If the power grid were collapsed for any serious length of time, that's about right. Big cities only have about a 3-day supply of food on hand. How many are dependent on medications that have to be refrigerated?

A grid collapse taking weeks or months to get put back up would see hundreds of thousands or more starving and dying, not counting the resulting chaos.

a reply to: Yourmomsentme

That would depend on the nature and duration of the attack.

Imagine if the grid were damaged enough to be cut off for a year.

Do you have any idea how ducked we'd be?



(No actual ducks were mentioned in this post)

Suxnet anyone... no computer is safe but we can do more

Anything online can be hacked luckaly we keep the main controles to powerplants offline as far as i know ... could be wrong

The usa needs a utility lan system. maby use the old phone system and cut the lines off that lead out of the usa or lay new hard lines

its rather hard to hack a hardwire lan systen inside the usa without phisical acsess ...

Who did the hack i see as moot unless they did something with it this is the time to fix it when someone dose find a way to bridge the gap to offline computers ...

a reply to: ketsuko

Not to mention all the nuclear power plants and spent fuel pools that would lose their ability to keep the ccoling pumps running.

Bad news. Really, really bad.

Actually this poses no risk, except to data being stolen for whatever reason. This was all over this morning and the computers that would put us at risk, are not hooked to the Internet in the first place and are not in danger. They don't know what they are after, but they can't cause any harm as far as the actual nuclear power plants go.

Why all the doom porn? Bad information I suppose.

originally posted by: Yourmomsentme
a reply to: Virole

Our electrical grid has long been the Achilles's heel, a successful attack would kill hundreds of millions and if blamed on Russia would definitely start a world war. 

Kill hundreds of millions?!?

How many people do you think live in the U.S.?

I could see some people dying and a huge inconvenience but to say hundreds of millions would die is a bit of an exaggeration.

Edit - I think the population is somewhere between 300 and 350 million. I doubt if an attack on the power grid would kill off half the U.S.

DoD, Congressional committees and private firms all estimate a major grid down event would kill 90% of Americans. That's roughly 300 million.

a reply to: Yourmomsentme

About 250 million people live in "urban" areas according to the last census, so wag it down to 150 million for the actual heart of the city, it will be on fire and looted within a week.

But I may just be feeling cynical..

If this is the same story as the one on the car radio this morning that referenced Wolf Creek, they said it only got into the business side, not any of the operationals.

a reply to: Blaine91555

True, there should be nothing vital reachable from the internet without a colossal blunder from an employee.. ala Iran and stuxnet.

But even then it could only have a very small footprint for an attack, it just would not be a good method of assault unless they have changed things at power plants and most things are now connected to the internet.

Nothing wrong with a little doom porn though, helps me wake up the brain pan for my homework.

originally posted by: Blaine91555
Actually this poses no risk, except to data being stolen for whatever reason. This was all over this morning and the computers that would put us at risk, are not hooked to the Internet in the first place and are not in danger. They don't know what they are after, but they can't cause any harm as far as the actual nuclear power plants go.

Why all the doom porn? Bad information I suppose.

Except, Congress and the DoD acknowledge it is a possibility and they are aware most of America's major enemies are aware of this. They haven't addressed it. They couldn't have done anything this time because they were in the wrong network.

"There was absolutely no operational impact to Wolf Creek," Jenny Hageman, a spokeswoman for the nuclear plant, said in a statement to Bloomberg News. "The reason that is true is because the operational computer systems are completely separate from the corporate network."

From the OP source. No risk.

a reply to: Blaine91555

At least acknowledge, if the media wanted to they could easily spin this as a thwarted attack on the American people as a pretext for war given the timeline of finger pointing didn't allow for a real investigation.

If you can't who did it, how can you say where it originated?

a reply to: Blaine91555

This time. I already said that. Wrong network.