Intentional Terrorist Attack Results in 40K without power in Moore County NC
- Thread starter Politic Negro
- Start date
There was a 60 minutes special on this a few months ago. Someone shot up a power grid in California trying to do the same thing but they weren't successful. They were saying that terrorist groups will likely start targeting power grids more.
Bizarro world.
People with the least problems find something to get out of sorts about to feel alive. Then mess up other people's lives to feel like they accomplished some mission. The people who should be engaging in disrupting the system are too busy working to do this type of shit.
People with the least problems find something to get out of sorts about to feel alive. Then mess up other people's lives to feel like they accomplished some mission. The people who should be engaging in disrupting the system are too busy working to do this type of shit.
What's even crazier is how many times the electric grids have been hacked.
Our infrastructure is our weakness & a lot of people are aware of this.
A few well-placed bombs, a rogue attack or two & you just brought down a major city.
It's really that easy.
FBI charges neo-Nazi leader in plot to attack Baltimore power grid
The U.S. Justice Department has charged a neo-Nazi leader and his associate with plotting to attack Baltimore's power grid, a plan the FBI thwarted with the help of a confidential informant.
WASHINGTON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has charged a neo-Nazi leader and his associate with plotting to attack Baltimore's power grid, a plan the FBI thwarted with the help of a confidential informant.
Brandon Russell, of Orlando, Florida and Sarah Clendaniel from Maryland, were arrested last week, officials said in a briefing on Monday, and they have been charged with conspiring to damage an energy facility.
Russell is a convicted felon and founder of a neo-Nazi group called the Atomwaffen Division that works toward "ushering in the collapse of civilization," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that tracks U.S. hate groups.
Russell previously was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to possession of an unregistered destruction device and the improper storage of explosive materials.
At the time of his arrest, he was still on supervised release, according to the FBI.
The FBI on Monday alleged the plot was racially motivated but did not provide details. About 62% of Baltimore city residents are Black, according to U.S. Census data.
Representatives for Clendaniel and Russell could not immediately be reached for comment.
"Clendaniel and Russell conspired and took steps to shoot multiple electrical substations in the Baltimore area aiming to 'completely destroy this whole city', but these plans were stopped," Erek Barron, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, said in the press briefing.
Russell first came under suspicion in 2017, when his former roommate Devon Arthurs was arrested for murder.
During his interview with the FBI, Arthurs said his fellow roommates were plotting to attack U.S. infrastructure, including power lines in Florida.
The information led to Russell's arrest and subsequent conviction.
Then, starting in at least June 2022, an FBI confidential informant started to receive encrypted messages from a user known as "Homunculus” who encouraged the informant to attack electrical substations, the complaint says.
In those communications over the next few months, Homunculus urged an attack “when there is greatest strain on the grid,” and noted that follow-up attacks could further lead to a "cascading failure costing billions of dollars.”
In January 2023, as their communications continued, a third user known as @kali1889 joined the conversation. She said she had compiled a list of potential targets, including Baltimore, noting the location was “literally like a life artery.”
According to the complaint, the account @kali1889 was traced to Clendaniel, who also has an extensive criminal record including a prior conviction for armed robbery.
“Homunculus,” meanwhile, was traced back to Russell, the FBI said.
Baltimore Gas and Electric, a subsidiary of Exelon Corporation (EXC.O), which owns the targeted substations, said there was no damage to any of its equipment or outages.
The arrests followed recent vandalization of electrical substations that left thousands of people without power in other states including North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington.
The motives for those attacks were not known.
Thomas Sobocinski, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Baltimore office, said the FBI was not aware of any links between the two people arrested in the alleged Baltimore plot and attacks elsewhere on electrical infrastructure.
In Tacoma, Washington, four electrical substations were vandalized around Christmas, leaving over 14,000 customers without power. Two men were arrested in connection with those attacks.
Also in December, a utility in North Carolina reported outages from what local authorities said were orchestrated shootings investigated by federal law enforcement. Duke Energy Corp (DUK.N), which provided power to the area, said at the time a total of 45,000 people had lost power.
The FBI also investigated shots fired near a power facility in South Carolina days later.
NERC Announces Actions Addressing Physical Security
WASHINGTON, D.C. – NERC filed its report evaluating the CIP-014 Reliability Standard with FERC today. The report, which was directed by FERC in a December 15, 2022 order, called for NERC to study the applicability criteria of the standard and the adequacy of the risk assessment and to assess whether a minimum level of physical security protections should be established for all bulk power system transmission stations, substations, and primary control centers.
“This evaluation was important given the heightened physical security threat environment and the high profile attacks which occurred in the fourth quarter of 2022. Our study outlines actions to strengthen the physical security standard and foster robust stakeholder engagement to consider additional risk-based enhancements,” said Jim Robb, NERC president and CEO. “Following recent events, industry and the E-ISAC developed and shared a physical security resource guide that detailed broader considerations in developing a physical security approach for all assets beyond those identified as critical by CIP-014. The actions outlined in our report will help further secure critical bulk power system assets and ensure the foundational protections of CIP-014 are keeping pace with a dynamic risk environment.”
Findings and follow-up actions include:
Posted On: 04/14/2023
www.nerc.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. – NERC filed its report evaluating the CIP-014 Reliability Standard with FERC today. The report, which was directed by FERC in a December 15, 2022 order, called for NERC to study the applicability criteria of the standard and the adequacy of the risk assessment and to assess whether a minimum level of physical security protections should be established for all bulk power system transmission stations, substations, and primary control centers.
“This evaluation was important given the heightened physical security threat environment and the high profile attacks which occurred in the fourth quarter of 2022. Our study outlines actions to strengthen the physical security standard and foster robust stakeholder engagement to consider additional risk-based enhancements,” said Jim Robb, NERC president and CEO. “Following recent events, industry and the E-ISAC developed and shared a physical security resource guide that detailed broader considerations in developing a physical security approach for all assets beyond those identified as critical by CIP-014. The actions outlined in our report will help further secure critical bulk power system assets and ensure the foundational protections of CIP-014 are keeping pace with a dynamic risk environment.”
Findings and follow-up actions include:
- NERC does not recommend expansion of the CIP-014 applicability criteria. NERC will work with FERC staff to hold a technical conference to evaluate whether additional substation configurations should be included in the existing criteria. Based on available data, NERC found no evidence that expansion of the criteria would identify additional substations as critical. Our review does suggest that additional data and analysis is needed on whether additional substations configurations warrant assessment under CIP-014. A technical conference will identify which substations should be studied and establish data needs on a periodic basis to determine whether they should be included in the applicability criteria.
- The report finds that the objective of the CIP-014 risk assessment requirement is appropriate, but should be refined to help ensure the assessment are performed using consistently and with the appropriate technical rigor. To promote consistency, NERC will initiate a standards development project to clarify risk assessment expectations, including for dynamic studies.
- While NERC is not recommending a common minimum level of physical security protections, NERC finds that, given the increase in physical security attacks on bulk power system substations, there is a need to evaluate additional reliability, resiliency, and security measures designed to mitigate the risks associated with those physical security attacks. NERC will work with FERC staff to hold a technical conference to further study appropriate levels of physical protections. NERC advocates taking a risk-based approach to determine what level of investment would be appropriate based on local risk factors, regional system configuration, and the asset’s mean time to recover. The technical conference will gather additional data on protection, response, and resiliency measures and discuss whether and how they could be appropriately incorporated into reliability standards or guidelines.
Posted On: 04/14/2023
NERC Announces Actions Addressing Physical Security
www.nerc.com
People have no idea. A lot of stuff is just guarded with a chain and lock from home depot.
Are utility companies — and the government — ready for the next attack on the grid?
A dramatic 2013 attack on California’s electricity system prompted security upgrades. Reviews are underway after recent similar assaults.
On Friday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was set to receive a review of security standards for the nation’s sprawling electrical transmission system. The FERC commissioned the study after a recent series of physical attacks on electrical substations across the country.
These substations are a key stopover for electricity as it heads from power plants to your home or business.
Gunfire damage at two North Carolina substations in December left 45,000 people without power for up to five days. Some of the recent attacks have similarities to an incident in California that occurred 10 years ago.
The Metcalf Transmission Substation, owned by Pacific Gas & Electric Co., is nestled along a stretch of green, rolling hills near San Jose. Horses often graze off a country road close to the facility’s entrance.
Down the road, driving on the ranch where he and his wife operate a corporate event space, Steve Nilmeyer said he remembers what happened during the wee hours of April 16, 2013.
“We just heard a bunch of gunshots. It was like, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop — over and over and over again,” he said.
At around 1 a.m., over a 20-minute period, snipers took down 17 transformers at the substation. The assault caused an estimated $15 million in damage.
Given Metcalf’s location, the damage could have cut power to Silicon Valley, the country’s technology hub. Cell service did go down, but officials rerouted the flow of electricity and were able to prevent a major blackout.
Nilmeyer’s wife, Michelle Lybbert-Nilmeyer, said details of the attack remained murky for months. Law enforcement investigated and asked the couple questions.
“It was very, very hush-hush,” she said. “They didn’t really tell you what was going on or what happened. You didn’t know if it was an accident or intentional. So you never really got a lot of information — never did.”
Indications that the attack may have been the result of a “military-style” plot only became public some eight months later.
A decade on, the substation is fortified with walls and cameras. But no one has been arrested for what happened there.
Evidence from recent plots against electrical substations suggests that some attackers have studied past incidents like Metcalf.
Tom Popik is chair of the Foundation for Resilient Societies, which promotes best practices for protecting the grid and other critical infrastructure. He said this kind of equipment is a bigger target now.
“We have extremist groups that understand how to attack the electric grid, how to attack substations,” he said.
That knowledge is the reason industry players are reluctant to reveal much about those attacks, fearing copycat strikes.
PG&E said it has spent $300 million to protect substations since the 2013 attack. It deflected Marketplace’s questions about ongoing security concerns, saying “We aren’t going to provide a road map for anyone.”
The public is in the dark because of this caution, Popik said. “Keeping the vulnerability of the electric grid secret is a short-term strategy. It might work for a few years, but it’s not going to work in the long term.”
Popik argues that Metcalf was supposed to be a wakeup call. And it did prompt reforms.
FERC, the federal regulator, declined a request for an on-the-record interview with Marketplace but shared the safety standards that were adopted after the 2013 incident.
They aimed to protect against risks to the most critical transmission infrastructure. But it’s unclear how much utility companies beyond PG&E have spent on substation security since the new standards took effect.
Those standards — now under FERC review — are not working, said Mike Mabee of the website Grid Security Now!
“After the physical security standard was put into place, we still continue to have these attacks. So the physical security standard has not been effective,” he said.
Mabee, who has researched physical attacks on the electric grid for years, estimates there have been about 1,000 such incidents since 2010.
They range from vandalism to elaborate operations like Metcalf. They can be costly to repair, but Mabee said money is not the biggest concern.
“The veneer of civilization is really, really thin and very, very fragile,” he said. “If we lose all of our critical infrastructures because our electric grid goes down for a long period of time, people aren’t necessarily going to behave the way we would want them to.”
The human cost of a prolonged outage could be catastrophic. Mabee said we — and the country’s emergency management system — aren’t ready.