Computers now control even the largest pieces of industrial machinery, making critical infrastructure vulnerable to electronic attack. As David Nicol, director of the Information Trust Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, describes in "Hacking the Lights Out", determined hackers could bring down a significant portion of the U.S. electrical grid. Yet the threat is not just theoretical. Over the past decade electronic intrusions have disrupted operations at power plants, sewage treatment centers and nuclear facilities. Here are some of the more notable break-ins.

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3 Comments

1. 1. denverjims 04:53 PM 6/23/11

   Hate to harp on these types of articles (actually really do enjoy it) but:
   1. Not one of these examples was a knock out of a grid.
   2. Not clear that any of the power outages were really caused by hackers (60 Minutes isn't necessarily always right - see Meredith Whitney's Apocolyptic Predictions on Municipal Bond defaults).
   3. What did the slideshow add to the "scientific aspect" of this article? A single article listing the assertions would have been more efficient. But I guess that "Popular Scientific American" feels we need shiny moving things to keep our attention.
   Regards, Jim

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2. 2. denverjims in reply to denverjims 05:09 PM 6/23/11

   Almost forgot #7 wherein the CIA (and we can really trust those guys) said some unnamed hackers had at some unnamed time taken down a grid in some unnamed country. Honest, trust us! Very scientific... quant suff (with apologies to Alfred Bester)
   
   I'm not saying that this threat is not real. I'm just saying this is more the kind of article I'd expect in Time or GQ magazines; not SA. I guess I'm just out of step with the times...

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3. 3. electric38 01:24 AM 6/24/11

   Another good reason why distributed generation (rooftop solar) should be promoted throughout the U.S.. Having several independent power sources (not dependent on the local utility) should eliminate or minimize this problem. Having "Feed in" sources of excess energy from several points of the grid (via consumers and small businesses using rooftop solar) will occur faster if the US encourages aggressive FIT's at the federal, state and local levels. Some states are waiving or lowering building permit fees for solar and freezing taxing for the first years. Ushering in the "electric vehicle age" using solar charging will also take the risk out of worrying about the local utility providing power for these vehicles.
   All the data centers I have seen already have at least 2 or more backup sources anyways (generator and UPS).

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