In April of 2017, the Council on Foreign Relations released a report on the vulnerability of the U.S. power grid. Because of the importance of electricity to the smooth functioning of society and because of the critical nature of power to the 16 sectors of the U.S economy that make up what’s considered critical infrastructure, a significant attack on the grid could cause serious damage in the U.S., if it were to happen. “Any of the system’s principal elements – power generation, transmission or distribution – could be targeted for a cyberattack,” the agency said.
1- The U.S. power grid has long been considered a target for a major cyberattack; however “carrying out a cyberattack that successfully disrupts grid operations would be extremely difficult, but not impossible,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations’ report.
2- The U.S. power grid was built for “reliability and safety” and is fairly easy to defend. During winter weather or a hurricane for example, U.S. power crews are good at anticipating problems and can generally move away from computers to manual operations, cyber security expert Robert M. Lee said in an interview with Scientific American magazine.
>> Related: Hackers target European businesses, banks, services in new cyberattacks
3- Because of computer technology and the growing interconnectedness of the digital landscape, and because returning to manual operations is growing more difficult, Lee said that there is cause for concern. “Our adversaries are getting much more aggressive. They’re learning a lot about our industrial systems, not just from a computer technology standpoint but from an industrial engineering standpoint, thinking about how to disrupt or maybe even destroy equipment. That’s where you start reaching some particularly alarming scenarios,” Lee told Scientific American.
4- The director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael Rogers, in testimony before Congress in 2014, said that China and a few other countries likely had the capability to shut down the U.S. power grid. “Rapid digitization combined with low levels of investment in cybersecurity and a weak regulatory regime suggest that the U.S. power system is as vulnerable - if not more vulnerable - to a cyberattack as systems in other parts of the world,” officials with the Council on Foreign Relations said.
>> Related: Homeland Security investigating after massive cyber attacks take down sites across the internet
5- A cyberattack on the U.S. electric grid could cause power losses in large parts of the United States that could last days or up to several weeks in some places, and it would cause a substantial economic impact, the Council on Foreign Relations reported. The report found the U.S. needs to work to put in place measures to prevent a cyberattack on the power grid, and to find ways to lessen the potentially catastrophic impact should one occur.
ALERT ALERT ALERT – TOTALLY REAL NEWS!
Hot off the heels of yesterday’s report by Microsoft that something something something Russian hackers, we have a new Facebook report that something something something Russian AND Iranian hackers.
So is Iran hacking to reelect Obama in the 2018 elections so they can get their nuke deal back
Let’s find out from this truthful and accurate bastion of the rights of the First Amendment!
Washington Post:
Iran was behind a sprawling disinformation operation on Facebook that targeted hundreds of thousands of people around the world, the social media company said Tuesday night, underscoring Silicon Valley’s increasingly global war on disinformation.
SPRAWLING!
LIKE A CAT!
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE SPRAWLED OVER!
The Iranian effort dated to 2011 and had ties to state media operations in that country, Facebook said, involving hundreds of accounts on both Facebook and its sister site, Instagram. It also spread to Twitter and YouTube, which both companies said they also removed. The fake Iranian accounts bought ads on Facebook and used it to organize events.
Facebook also deleted some unrelated fake accounts originating in Russia, which which has been the main focus of reporting on disinformation operations targeting the United States. Tuesday night’s revelations were unusual because the disinformation targeted people in many countries — the Middle East, Latin America, the U.K. and the U.S., Facebook said — and involved a nation-state actor other than Russia.
S P R A W L I N G
If God wanted us to be vegetarians, why are animals made of meat ?
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