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Comment by geoffmacdonald | Hacker News Reader

This is far more important than the NSA bullshit.

How so?

Because if the link's author is to be believed, China is sponsoring attacks on US infrastructure.

2 wrongs don't make a right - but how many countries have had their infrastructure attacked by the US in the last few years? The US ways (that I know of) usually involved explosives however.

If Snowden is to be believed, the US is sponsoring attacks on Hong Kong infrastructure (and probably Chinese as well, though I only know of him releasing a list of IP addresses in Hong Kong).

this is actually to lastlogin. Your answer is 2.

imagine an attack on the power grid. Now think about a large portion of the US without electricity and it won't come back because these hackers have full control of the power grid.

Be scared, be very scared.

Someone would totally have to swap some parts out or something to fix that! What a crisis! Make a movie!

Live Free or Die Hard is the movie.

It isn't in China's interest to switch off the US power grid - because then how would those 313 million people recharge their iPads, iPhones, tablet or switch on their LCD televisions, laptop computers or wash their trainers, socks, shirts etc. that all come from China?

Thats why I don't believe this was targeted. There is nothing China can learn from US automation systems. If they need to break into them into the future they would be able to. More interesting is business intelligence. This sounds like an automated phishing campaign that just happen to step on a control system.

The only thing scarier than terrorists? Cyber-terrorists, right?!

The paranoid, cynical parts of me think this system was set out with flashing lights so it would be easily compromised, so people can justify "cyber-security" bills like CISPA.

It doesn't even take a lot of cynicism or conspiracy theory to believe the powers that be had a wishlist before 9/11, hence USAPATRIOT Act etc. If we have a "cyber-9/11", I'm sure they'll be ready with that wishlist too, and octogenarian technophobic legislators will be more than happy to do their part to look like they're doing something.

There's a book called "Blackout" with that exact plot. I thought it was good written and the scenario not too impossible.

Maybe I'm missing something, but won't their control over the grid disappear once the power goes?

Not if they have full control over the power grid. Imagine no electricity for say, a month.

Remember the 2003 blackout?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

- Some areas lost water pressure because pumps lacked power. This loss of pressure caused potential contamination of the water supply.

- With the power fluctuations on the grid, power plants automatically went into "safe mode" to prevent damage in the case of an overload. This put much of the nuclear power normally available offline until those plants could be slowly taken out of "safe mode".

- Amtrak's Northeast Corridor railroad service was stopped north of Philadelphia, and all trains running into and out of New York City were shut down,

- Many gas stations were unable to pump fuel due to lack of electricity. In North Bay, Ontario, for instance, a long line of transport trucks was held up, unable to go further west to Manitoba without refueling. In some cities, traffic problems were compounded by motorists who simply drove until their cars ran out of gas on the highway.

- Cellular communication devices were disrupted. This was mainly due to the loss of backup power at the cellular sites where generators ran out of fuel.

- Large numbers of factories were closed in the affected area, and others outside the area were forced to close or slow work because of supply problems and the need to conserve energy while the grid was being stabilized.

This was just a few days. Imagine 30 days of this. It would total chaos. A lot of people forget how much we rely on electricity and the power grid.

The question is, how do they maintain full control over the grid for a month, when all the network equipment they rely on to hack the grid relies on electricity to operate?

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