Breaking into Never-Never Land - Hack Style

According to report, hackers have managed to penetrate the United States power grid and are able to take control of various systems within it, possibly with the ability to disrupt power to large numbers of people.  The hackers are attributed to be North Korean, Russian, Chinese, (fill in your favorite evil empire), but it really makes no difference who they charge because there is little to no evidence security systems (e.g. NSA, CIA, etc) have any idea where the hackers originate.  (AP Investigation:  US power grid vulnerable to foreign hacks)

Things have been a wee bit heavy-handed on the blog of late and we make no apology for that because the cases are real and the situations are important.  Nevertheless, dwelling forever on important topics makes people crotchety and boring.  We don't mind being crotchety but we really don't like being boring.

My friend, Pink, sent me the link and, no, I am not going to explain his name but he will get it.  He assures me the power grid has been penetrated in the way described and he knows this from his personal career experience in high-level power systems.  He knows the material and providing any more information regarding his background would unnecessarily reveal possibly his identity and we don't play that on the blog.


What I take from this is a true risk exists.  I don't give much credence to the source of it largely because we always hear the same bugaboos being charged with doing it yet no-one is ever identified. That sort of thing is CNN / Fox level journalism and we need substantially more credibility than that.

From the article regarding the attacks:

The public almost never learns the details about these types of attacks — they're rarer but also more intricate and potentially dangerous than data theft.  Information about the government's response to these hacks is often protected and sometimes classified; many are never even reported to the government.

Perhaps the same question occurs to you:  if this information is so deeply-restricted, how the fuck does some journalist know of it.  The last phrase just nails it:  if something is not even reported to the government was it Tinkerbell who told you?

And continuing:

These intrusions have not caused the kind of cascading blackouts that are feared by the intelligence community. But so many attackers have stowed away in the systems that run the U.S. electric grid that experts say they likely have the capability to strike at will.

Here we rely on my friend's credibility and we know that is real.  He says the systems, some unknown number, have been penetrated.  However, there is nothing in the article which gives any clear identification of whomever may have done it.  The absence of such information is covered with fluff such as 'believed by some private firms to have Russian origins' and this is simply not responsible journalism.

Of one thing we have no doubt:  if ISIS had really penetrated any aspect of the U.S. power grid, you would already be down.  We do not doubt my friend's word so we believe the system has been penetrated but, as to the article's ability to identify who did it, we yield no credibility at all.