Does smart-grid tech work any better than smart-home tech? So far most 'smart' tech hasn't had a good track record on security or reliability, certainly not at the level you would trust your major infrastructure to it.
It does come with some vulnerabilities. I'm not sure what the best way forward on those is; I suspect this bill's effects, if any, will not result in a more resilient or less vulnerable grid system. Attackers will just find different leverage points to attack.
I live in the Finnish countryside, and since much of the power grid out here is still ancient, there are power outages rather often.
However, if the power goes out, there's always something that tries to power everything back on automatically after exactly 30, 60, 120 and 240 seconds. If something's still wrong, the power will simply flick on and then off within a few seconds. If an outage lasts more than four minutes, it usually takes much longer to get it running again (I assume it's because it then triggers an alert that will be handled by a human operator).
I would assume there's a lot of similar stuff going on in the US power grid, considering it's immense size what I suspect is a somewhat similar mix of new and very old equipment.
And yes, surge protectors are mandatory here.
Sounds like a recloser, which tries a number of times to restore power under the assumption that most faults are transient (for instance, a branch falling in the wires and then sliding to the ground). After a set number of retries, it gives up and stays open; at that point, a human has to locate the fault, clear it (for instance, poking the fallen branch with a stick until it falls to the ground), and then tell the recloser to close the connection again.
I read a statistic at some point (which I can no longer find the reference for) that power outages tend to be bimodal: either they last a short time (e.g. <5min) or they last a long time. There's hardly anything in between.
In the US, utilities report outages longer than five minutes:
While I have no clue what the security or reliability looks like in industrial applications, I would hope they evaluate their solutions with reliability in mind.
It's barely better than iot stuff. And some "older" systems probably still need NT4 to run (I mean, if you're lucky)
Keep hoping... The number of industrial systems deployed that are connected to the internet with the default passwords unchanged or no passwords is nauseating.
https://threatpost.com/exposing-scada-systems-shodan-110910/...
How have they not been exploited/fixed already? Shodan's made it clear for years, of course anybody can use zmap/masscan.
Without having hacked a database of patient to device mappings, it's not like you can ask for ransom.
Also, you may already want someone in particular dead and are just looking for a vector. This seems almost untraceable.
I'm thankfully not this person, but at a basic level I could see some bored teen turning off a dam just for fun.
Honestly the only reason I don't is because it would be "wrong" to do, but the internet is full of people, it's certainly not a stretch that somebody would want to.