[31434] in bugtraq
Re: Blaster / Power Outage Follow up
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Nicholas Weaver)
Thu Sep 4 18:34:20 2003
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2003 14:02:44 -0700
From: Nicholas Weaver <nweaver@CS.berkeley.edu>
To: "Richard M. Smith" <rms@computerbytesman.com>
Cc: "'Geoff Shively'" <gshively@pivx.com>, bugtraq@securityfocus.com
Message-ID: <20030904140244.A18316@ring.CS.Berkeley.EDU>
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In-Reply-To: <006f01c3730b$0bef6a20$550ffea9@rms>; from rms@computerbytesman.com on Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 01:36:17PM -0400
On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 01:36:17PM -0400, Richard M. Smith composed:
> And here's more:
>
> Blackout Probe Hears FirstEnergy Tapes
> http://tinyurl.com/m8q4
>
> ...
>
> The House committee released a transcript of telephone calls between
> FirstEnergy and the Midwest region's power grid operator which showed
> growing chaos and confusion in FirstEnergy's control room in the hours
> before the blackout.
>
> "We have no clue. OUR COMPUTER IS GIVING US FITS, TOO. We don't even
> know the status of some of the stuff around us," an operator at Akron,
> Ohio-based FirstEnergy said.
This suggestst that claims of network disruption are spurious (Blaster
has very little network load, a side effect of bad design), rather
than operator CONTROL computers were directly infected, as Blaster
causes all sorts of weird side-effects (eg, Cut & paste, drag and
drop, and any control system using RPC stops working).
--
Nicholas C. Weaver nweaver@cs.berkeley.edu
