"Has power grid been hacked? U.S. won't say"

Source: Steve Holland and Randall Mikkelsen, Yahoo Tech, April 8, 2009.

The Wall Street Journal is cited as reporting "that cyberspies had penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system. The Journal said the intruders have not sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure but could try during a crisis or war."

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters the power grid is vulnerable to potentially disabling computer attacks, while declining to comment on reports that an intrusion had taken place.

"The vulnerability is something that the Department of Homeland Security and the energy sector have known about for years," she said. "We acknowledge that ... in this world, in an increasingly cyber world, these are increasing risks."......

The United States for several years has accused the Chinese and Russians, among others, of using cyber-attacks to try to steal American trade secrets, military secrets and government secrets.

The Chinese have been particularly active, a former U.S. security official told Reuters.

"They are all over the place," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They're getting into university systems, contractor systems, hacking government systems. There's no reason to think that the electrical system would be immune as well."

Comment: I suspect that the cyber threat is more severe than most people know. Think about the experience of the World Bank, where during the Satyam problems the Bank's President was told that he could remove all the computer support people and contracts immediately or he could continue the operation of the Bank, but not both. It took a couple of years to untangle the contractor from the Bank. If the electrical system and other infrastructure systems could be crippled, the country would grind to a halt. Think about the banks, the airlines, the railroads, today's trucking industry, the mail and other delivery systems, not to mention the government's bureaucracy. Of course, the threat probably goes both ways. We have hackers too, and other nations are also increasingly dependent on the cybersystems running their infrastructure. JAD