“…an attacker may be able to force control messages to perform such tasks as turning off the powerlatch, updating firmware, or attacking HAN devices. Potential ways of successfully executing such an attack may include stealing symmetric keys from a meter, private/public keys from a legitimate collector, or any other such authentication information.”- Security firm InGuardians’ report on the vulnerability of centralized power systems caused by “smart meters”
Of all the so-called “successes” of America’s anti-terrorist campaign since 9/11, one that’s not talked about is our power grid. That’s because nothing’s changed. If anything, it’s worse. Even the invention of so-called “smart meters” has created yet another way for would-be terrorists to not only take over a home or business’ electricity system, but gain access to the grid and cripple it remotely.
As the Bush regime did with its 9/11 intel, you can expect the industry-friendly Obamanoids to ignore or bury this valuable intelligence and encourage an attack by terrorists whom you KNOW are reading it. The only total answer to this problem is distributed energy: requiring every home and business to own and maintain its own power system: solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, even nuclear. As long as America is run by corporations though, you can expect not only an increased terrorist threat, but more power outages, shortages of coal, oil and other disappearing fossil fuel resources and, as Bush-Cheney showed us, lots of posterior-protection.
Tonko has been talking about this since 2003, both in New York State and Federal venues. You are right on the money about this being an enormous security threat. Let me assure you that very little beyond talk and some software design is being done about it.
Smart people – even smart engineers – don’t necessarily see all of the ramifications of interconnections of all sorts. Consider the Iceland volcano. Maybe it occurred to people immediately that this would lead to making air travel to, from, and around Europe difficult. But who thought right away, “Man, this is going to screw up the Kenyan, Israeli and Colombian trade in fresh fruit and flowers.”?
Distributed power generation is one way – and maybe the best way – to fault-isolate power generation and distribution failures. But there are problems in distributed generation at the business and household level with reliability, availability, maintainability, and durability (RAMD), as well as capitalization.
Consider that today’s grid was built for monopoly power distribution – pretty much one set of lines from generator to trunk, to substation to household drop. If we are going to go to an open energy market – and politically, it’s going to be hard to get the capitalization required for any other solution – we are going to need multiple lines from multiple generation points for market purposes, but also for security reasons.
The cost of any secure and “green” generation and distribution scheme is going to be massive. Generation at the company/investor level solves a lot of the RAMD problems as well as SOME of the capitalization issues: someone with better access to capital and technical expertise than the individual householder or business/property manager will be responsible for failures. But fault isolation will need to be built into the system from the beginning.
You’re right about America’s monopolistic, anti-competitive business history being the beginning and end of all discussions about energy. I’m sad that the Tea Party hasn’t launched into this one. It certainly takes more of their paycheck than anything except the federal government and the NRA. But THAT kind of freedom everyone is not what they’re really about. It’s only about them getting to play army like they did when they were kids- only with real guns in our backyards.