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Attack On The Grid...

Slapchop

Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Sep 1, 2009
674
23
45
New York
Interesting how this didn't make the MSM until now. Guess, some are starting to find out just how vulnerable the grid is and the potential it has to distrupt our way of life. Had to cut and paste the article but you can also follow the link at the bottom.
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Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism


April Attack Knocked Out Substation, Raises Concern for Country's Power Grid

By Rebecca Smith

Wall Street Journal

Feb. 4, 2014 10:30 p.m. ET

SAN JOSE, Calif.—The attack began just before 1 a.m. on April 16 last year, when someone slipped into an underground vault not far from a busy freeway and cut telephone cables.

Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley. A minute before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the night.

To avoid a blackout, electric-grid officials rerouted power around the site and asked power plants in Silicon Valley to produce more electricity. But it took utility workers 27 days to make repairs and bring the substation back to life.
Nobody has been arrested or charged in the attack at PG&E Corp.'s Metcalf transmission substation. It is an incident of which few Americans are aware. But one former federal regulator is calling it a terrorist act that, if it were widely replicated across the country, could take down the U.S. electric grid and black out much of the country.
The attack was "the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred" in the U.S., said Jon Wellinghoff, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time.

The Wall Street Journal assembled a chronology of the Metcalf attack from filings PG&E made to state and federal regulators; from other documents including a video released by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department; and from interviews, including with Mr. Wellinghoff.
The 64-year-old Nevadan, who was appointed to FERC in 2006 by President George W. Bush and stepped down in November, said he gave closed-door, high-level briefings to federal agencies, Congress and the White House last year. As months have passed without arrests, he said, he has grown increasingly concerned that an even larger attack could be in the works. He said he was going public about the incident out of concern that national security is at risk and critical electric-grid sites aren't adequately protected.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn't think a terrorist organization caused the Metcalf attack (**they never do...!), said a spokesman for the FBI in San Francisco. Investigators are "continuing to sift through the evidence," he said.
Some people in the utility industry share Mr. Wellinghoff's concerns, including a former official at PG&E, Metcalf's owner, who told an industry gathering in November he feared the incident could have been a dress rehearsal for a larger event.
"This wasn't an incident where Billy-Bob and Joe decided, after a few brewskis, to come in and shoot up a substation," Mark Johnson, retired vice president of transmission for PG&E, told the utility security conference, according to a video of his presentation. "This was an event that was well thought out, well planned and they targeted certain components." When reached, Mr. Johnson declined to comment further.
A spokesman for PG&E said the company takes all incidents seriously but declined to discuss the Metcalf event in detail for fear of giving information to potential copycats. "We won't speculate about the motives" of the attackers, added the spokesman, Brian Swanson. He said PG&E has increased security measures.

Utility executives and federal energy officials have long worried that the electric grid is vulnerable to sabotage. That is in part because the grid, which is really three systems serving different areas of the U.S., has failed when small problems such as trees hitting transmission lines created cascading blackouts. One in 2003 knocked out power to 50 million people in the Eastern U.S. and Canada for days.
Many of the system's most important components sit out in the open, often in remote locations, protected by little more than cameras and chain-link fences.

To some, the Metcalf incident has lifted the discussion of serious U.S. grid attacks beyond the theoretical. "The breadth and depth of the attack was unprecedented" in the U.S., said Rich Lordan, senior technical executive for the Electric Power Research Institute. The motivation, he said, "appears to be preparation for an act of war."
The attack lasted slightly less than an hour, according to the chronology assembled by the Journal.
At 12:58 a.m., AT&T fiber-optic telecommunications cables were cut—in a way that made them hard to repair—in an underground vault near the substation, not far from U.S. Highway 101 just outside south San Jose. It would have taken more than one person to lift the metal vault cover, said people who visited the site.
Nine minutes later, some customers of Level 3 Communications, an Internet service provider, lost service. Cables in its vault near the Metcalf substation were also cut.
At 1:31 a.m., a surveillance camera pointed along a chain-link fence around the substation recorded a streak of light that investigators from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's office think was a signal from a waved flashlight. It was followed by the muzzle flash of rifles and sparks from bullets hitting the fence.
The substation's cameras weren't aimed outside its perimeter, where the attackers were. They shooters appear to have aimed at the transformers' oil-filled cooling systems. These began to bleed oil, but didn't explode, as the transformers probably would have done if hit in other areas.
About six minutes after the shooting started, PG&E confirms, it got an alarm from motion sensors at the substation, possibly from bullets grazing the fence, which is shown on video.
Four minutes later, at 1:41 a.m., the sheriff's department received a 911 call about gunfire, sent by an engineer at a nearby power plant that still had phone service.
Riddled with bullet holes, the transformers leaked 52,000 gallons of oil, then overheated. The first bank of them crashed at 1:45 a.m., at which time PG&E's control center about 90 miles north received an equipment-failure alarm.
Five minutes later, another apparent flashlight signal, caught on film, marked the end of the attack. More than 100 shell casings of the sort ejected by AK-47s were later found at the site.
At 1:51 a.m., law-enforcement officers arrived, but found everything quiet. Unable to get past the locked fence and seeing nothing suspicious, they left.
A PG&E worker, awakened by the utility's control center at 2:03 a.m., arrived at 3:15 a.m. to survey the damage.
Grid officials routed some power around the substation to keep the system stable and asked customers in Silicon Valley to conserve electricity.
In a news release, PG&E said the substation had been hit by vandals. It has since confirmed 17 transformers were knocked out.
Mr. Wellinghoff, then chairman of FERC, said that after he heard about the scope of the attack, he flew to California, bringing with him experts from the U.S. Navy's Dahlgren Surface Warfare Center in Virginia, which trains Navy SEALs. After walking the site with PG&E officials and FBI agents, Mr. Wellinghoff said, the military experts told him it looked like a professional job.
In addition to fingerprint-free shell casings, they pointed out small piles of rocks, which they said could have been left by an advance scout to tell the attackers where to get the best shots.
"They said it was a targeting package just like they would put together for an attack," Mr. Wellinghoff said.
Mr. Wellinghoff, now a law partner at Stoel Rives LLP in San Francisco, said he arranged a series of meetings in the following weeks to let other federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, know what happened and to enlist their help. He held a closed-door meeting with utility executives in San Francisco in June and has distributed lists of things utilities should do to strengthen their defenses.
A spokesman for Homeland Security said it is up to utilities to protect the grid. The department's role in an emergency is to connect federal agencies and local police and facilitate information sharing, the spokesman said.
As word of the attack spread through the utility industry, some companies moved swiftly to review their security efforts. "We're looking at things differently now," said Michelle Campanella, an FBI veteran who is director of security for Consolidated Edison Inc. in New York. For example, she said, Con Ed changed the angles of some of its 1,200 security cameras "so we don't have any blind spots."
Some of the legislators Mr. Wellinghoff briefed are calling for action. Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) mentioned the incident at a FERC oversight hearing in December, saying he was concerned that no one in government can order utilities to improve grid protections or to take charge in an emergency.
As for Mr. Wellinghoff, he said he has made something of a hobby of visiting big substations to look over defenses and see whether he is questioned by security details or local police. He said he typically finds easy access to fence lines that are often close to important equipment.
"What keeps me awake at night is a physical attack that could take down the grid," he said. "This is a huge problem."
—Tom McGinty contributed to this article.
















 
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The MSM hit all the buzz words:
Snipers
Surgically
Disappeared into the night
Professional job
Advance scout
Military grade rifles

or, copper cable thieves that simply ended up vandalizing a remote power station?
 
"they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers" ... "More than 100 shell casings of the sort ejected by AK-47s"
 
"they surgically they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers

Perhaps in contrast to take out few kitchen utensils and blow up few innocents which in the end causes minor panic locally and the most it cause is .gov to respond in excess force and demonstrate they don't care much for constitution which in the end pisses off perhaps 1% of population at best.

Now imagine some "Billy-bobs with brewskies" all over the country "surgically removing various fluids" from various devices and/or persons that bring joy and happiness to consumer drones all over the country what the fuck you think would happen to "greatest nation under god" in a few days...

How many people actually know you need to cool transformers, how many people actually know that various cables are stored with excess length to facilitate faster repair, how many people know that to produce one big transformer a substantial time has to elapse and transformers aren't bought in local walmart. There is plenty of such examples where relatively vulnerable tech. supports important services which guarantee "law and order in society". Its less evil (its even beneficial -> sun tzu "when weak appear strong and when strong appear weak") that every drone knows/thinks that .gov is omnipotent and able to count number of dimples on your ass from space than drones to figure out this system is very fragile and that those running this ship(t) are far from being omnipotent or collectively smart (aka are in fact dumb as they get with added various mental disorders).

Any news like that will be filtered/screened/watered down...
 
choice of weapon and shot placement indicates amateur hour.
Easily and permanently done with a different light weapons choice, many fewer rounds and other shot placement on the same target.
Best case 16 weeks replacement downtime unless surplus from a shuttered plant were available.
Bigger units have to come from Europe or South America ( Brazil ).
 
As Sharac states, those transformers are not purchased at the local Wally-World. A very large number of them are manufactured right here in this city. And then trucked around the continent, where needed. I know this, for a few reasons.

When one of these larger structures needs to be moved, it is a near "kibuki-dance" of choreographed logistics. The immense size and weight of the unit alone requires many road closures, nighttime travel, and continuous police escort (trading off from one jurisdiction to another), not to mention various other support vehicles. When the Eastern Seaboard went down some years ago, one of the reasons it took so long to get back up and running again, was simply the time it took for the equipment to literally crawl there. You can only move that mass so fast. And on top of that, the road that you're on needs to be somewhat 'verified' that it can take the load.

Not a time to have an 'oops' and have egg on ones face. But I will say though, that what these units do, and how they 'tie in' and get things going is quite impressive. Pretty much everyone down there (and up here too, don't get me wrong) is benefiting from these efforts. In one way or another. We're not talking about the typical "5 gallon pail sized transformer that is mounted near the top of the corner telephone pole". That is for sure.
 
0cpPSBS.jpg

​WHAT!? AN ATTACK ON THE GRID!?
 
10 months ago? Has this been kept "secret" all this time? It seems like it would have been bigger news, if it were getting all this press, when it happened. I'm not in any way condoning it, nor do I think something like this won't happen again. It is the delay in the national discussion that is almost as strange, as the event itself!
 
I'm thinking that it's part of a smoke and mirrors misdirection to keep us from focusing on other things that are going on right now.
 
Well, some private security firm has probably earned a nice contract babysitting sub-stations across the country...
 
10 months ago? Has this been kept "secret" all this time? It seems like it would have been bigger news, if it were getting all this press, when it happened.

This went down while some asshole named "Chris Dorner" was hogging most of the headlines. I'm quite amused at the number of people on this forum who seem to be expressing all manner of surprised/shocked/stunned reactions - it shows who is really paying attention, and who is just hitting the major news sites on occasion and parroting the mainstream storylines.
 
I've worked for two large utility company's in the Midwest for the last 8 years. If I had to guess, the main reason this didn't become a big story was that the utility company was trying to keep it quiet. If people knew how vulnerable our substations were this would happen a lot more. I personally don't think stories like this should make it to the front pages. It just gives disturbed people, (which there is plenty of), an idea. All it would take is one guy with a vehicle, a large caliber rifle, and minimal planning to wipe out dozens of these type of transformers in one evening. It would be way to easy. Its pretty upsetting actually. My guess is we'll see more of this in the future. If a story like this makes the headline news for a night or two, I think it would make it worse.
 
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If someone wants to fuck things up the place to do that is the WWW. Shut that down for a week, at least her in the US, and there would be chaos. EVERYTHING is tied into the net these days. shut that down and in most areas there would be no fuel, thus no food, no getting around, no food, maybe no water.
 
If they really are worried about the grid their efforts would be better spent searching for Chinese kids hacking us from their Mom's basement in Bejing.
 
How about the guy that was found crawling into an intake of a New Jersey water treatment plant a week or so before the super bowl...or the "engineers" walking around the water reservoir that serves metropolitan Boston last April?

I think probes but it doesn't fit in with message that all is well, nothing to see, we have made the world safe, as long as we keep an eye on all domestic message traffic the world will be safe.

Sadly the response to this has been to look inward instead of focusing more on the external threat. That may well be the truth when all is said and done but this is being used to enhance the surveillance society. Im tired of cameras and being guilty until proven innocent.
 
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If they really are worried about the grid their efforts would be better spent searching for Chinese kids hacking us from their Mom's basement in Bejing.



BBC News China
19 February 2013 Last updated at 14:57 ET
China military unit 'behind prolific hacking'

A secretive branch of China's military is probably one of the world's "most prolific cyber espionage groups", a US cyber security firm has said.

Mandiant said Unit 61398 was believed to have "systematically stolen hundreds of terabytes of data" from at least 141 organisations around the world.

The White House said it has taken its concerns about cyber-theft to the highest levels of China's government.

China has denied hacking and questioned Mandiant's report.

"Hacking attacks are transnational and anonymous," said foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei.

"Determining their origins are extremely difficult. We don't know how the evidence in this so-called report can be tenable.

Mr Hong added that Beijing "firmly opposes hacking", has taken steps to prevent it and is also a victim of cyber attacks.

In an indication of the military sensitivity around the Shanghai site pinpointed by the report as home to the hacking group, the BBC's John Sudworth and his camera crew were briefly detained by soldiers when they went to film the facility. They were only released once they had handed over their footage.
'Extensive campaign'

In its unusually detailed report, US-based computer security company Mandiant said it had investigated hundreds of data breaches since 2004, most of which it attributed to what it termed "Advanced Persistent Threat" actors.

The details it had uncovered, it said, "convince us that the groups conducting these activities are based primarily in China and that the Chinese government is aware of them".

The most prolific of these actors is APT1, which Mandiant says is "a single organisation of operators that has conducted a cyber espionage campaign against a broad range of victims since at least 2006".

"From our observations, it is one of the most prolific cyber espionage groups in terms of the sheer quantity of information stolen," it said, adding that it was "likely government-sponsored and one of the most persistent of China's cyber threat actors".

"We believe that APT1 is able to wage such a long-running and extensive cyber espionage campaign in large part because it receives direct government support," said Mandiant.

The firm said it had traced the hacking activities of APT1 to the site of 12-storey building in the Pudong area of Shanghai. It said that Unit 61398 of the People's Liberation Army "is also located in precisely the same area" and that the actors had similar "missions, capabilities and resources".

Among the findings about APT1 in the report were that it:

is staffed by hundreds, possibly thousands, of proficient English speakers with advanced computer security and networking skills
has hacked into 141 companies across 20 industries, 87% based in English-speaking countries, and is able to steal from dozens of networks simultaneously
has stolen hundreds of terabytes of information including blueprints, business plans, pricing documents, user credentials, emails and contact lists
stayed inside hacked networks for an average of 356 days, with the longest lasting 1,764 days
targeted industries identified by China as strategically important under its Five Year Plan for economic growth

'Groundless'

Unit 61398 has for some time been suspected by the US of being central to China's cyber espionage programme, the New York Times reports.

Mandiant admitted there could be one alternative explanation for its findings: that "a secret, resourced organisation full of mainland Chinese speakers with direct access to Shanghai-based telecommunications infrastructure is engaged in a multi-year, enterprise scale computer espionage campaign right outside of Unit 61398's gates, performing tasks similar to Unit 61398's known mission".

Several governments, foreign companies and organisations have said in the past they suspect China of carrying out extensive cyber espionage over periods of several years.

On Tuesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that the Obama administration had "repeatedly raised our concerns at the highest levels about cyber theft with senior Chinese officials including in the military and we will continue to do so".

Mr Carney declined to comment specifically on the contents of the report.

Last month, the New York Times said its systems had been infiltrated over a period of four months, after it wrote a report on the alleged wealth of China's outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao.

Mandiant, which the paper hired to investigate, traced the hack to China. However, the paper said its breach had been attributed to a different group. The Wall Street Journal also reported a China-based hack.

At the time, China's foreign ministry dismissed the New York Times accusations as "groundless", saying that to "conclude without hard evidence that China participated in such hacking attacks is totally irresponsible".
BBC News - China military unit 'behind prolific hacking'
 
I don't believe that was a grid attack, I believe it was training for same. Knowing response time, and cutting it that close says they did not know were to it the X-formers, and cooling oil in X-formers have not had PCB's for a very long time now. There may have been some professional aspects to the event, but shooting the cooling systems means either they thought they could start a fire an book, or dumping the oil would toast the X/F's quickly. Neither of which shows technical prowess. I submit if it were a grid true grid attract a number of false flags would have been called into LE and the single would have evolved into a minimum of 3+ locations at once. Besides you would get more bang for your short term buck,(if you wanted a major diversion for better things) by dropping boxed 500KV (and greater) lines in the correct places. If your going to tag a X-former know the correct one to tag and were to tag it at.
 
Any contractor has the ability to set up a scenario that is commonly used by SOCOM forces because the personnel ARE former SOCOM. These are not your basic redneck wannabe milita types. California, as I have stated before, is home to LEGIONs of former military who are just plain tired of the BS. This was nothing but a small probing excercise to see just what they could do and what effect it would have. The next one will be even better. Oh, and more than likely a lot bigger too. AK's are still dirt cheap, and 7.62x39 can be bought everywhere for dirt cheap.
Still, to not hit the good stuff, maaaan, I woulda fired up a power station and taken out a lot more with one swoop. Those big wire houses with the giant transformers, THOSE are the good targets that make huge balls of electrical fire and flame. Take out a grid power station, and internet follows either way if it's on FO ot T3, anything but dial up on phone lines or DSL and WTF uses THAT obsolete crap?
damn, this all borders on political and whatever else. Don't Ban me bro!
 
Pseudo anarchists or twisted environmentalists with an anti-development mentality is my guess.

See the threads on diesel, gas generators.

There has always been and will always be deranged people. Sort of like crooked polit*#&s.
 
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Pseudo anarchists or twisted environmentalists with an anti-development mentality is my guess.

Impossible! Those are the people that want to prohibit firearm in California.

(Insert sarcasm smiley here)
 
I woulda fired up a power station and taken out a lot more with one swoop. Those big wire houses with the giant transformers, THOSE are the good targets that make huge balls of electrical fire and flame. Take out a grid power station, and internet follows either way if it's on FO ot T3, anything but dial up on phone lines or DSL and WTF uses THAT obsolete crap?
damn, this all borders on political and whatever else. Don't Ban me bro!

Now real world info,... Ref Base load(BLP's) an Peaking plants(PP's)
Trying to drop the grid via a rifle is short sighted, unless it's a major concerted effort. I will tell all of you one thing, get caught carrying a weapon or firing same at or near a fossil fueled Plant (BLP or PP) and that's one thing, as some of those guys/gals have a limited sense of humor, very limited but it's there never the less. A Nuke plant,.... I don't care how good you think you are, or who you know, there are guys at/on that site (and this site) 24/7-365 that will make you disappear,... forever.
It's been fun and games to this point,...and the Tangos are not stupid at all. All that said, training for what if goes on daily. There are folks here who get to play bad guy(only they don't get live ammo, the opposition has nothing but) all the time, but their real job is training FNG's what to watch and look for, while pointing out weak links.
 
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