Chinese Researcher Says US Power Grid Is Vulnerable, Strategist Overreacts

An anonymous reader writes with a story about Wang Jianwei, a grad student in China who recently released a paper detailing a vulnerability in the US power grid. Despite the paper being rather typical for security research, its origin set off alarm bells for military strategist Larry M. Wortzel, who testified before Congress that the student was a threat, despite the fact that the published attack wasn't really feasible. Quoting: "'We usually say "attack" so you can see what would happen,' [Wang] said. 'My emphasis is on how you can protect this. My goal is to find a solution to make the network safer and better protected.' And independent American scientists who read his paper said it was true: Mr. Wang's work was a conventional technical exercise that in no way could be used to take down a power grid. The difference between Mr. Wang's explanation and Mr. Wortzel’s conclusion is of more than academic interest. It shows that in an atmosphere already charged with hostility between the United States and China over cybersecurity issues, including large-scale attacks on computer networks, even a misunderstanding has the potential to escalate tension and set off an overreaction. 'Already people are interpreting this as demonstrating some kind of interest that China would have in disrupting the US power grid,' said Nart Villeneuve, a researcher with the SecDev Group, an Ottawa-based cybersecurity research and consulting group."

It would be better

[Anonymous Coward]

for the US Govt to give this kid a job, rather than letting the chinese use his talents.

(Or some other 3rd party like Iran)

This is just silly, but no harm done.

[Securityemo]

I guess the profile of the Chinese being ultra-patriotic and always acting in the best interest of China, together with the nagging (alleged) cyber-sleuthing on US networks makes this behavior understandable, but he's overreacting. However, the situation Wortzel described could have been real, and there's no way for him to judge. The alert seems to have been canceled already, so problem solved. No black helicopters with identity-less elite commandos arriving in the night to slit the throat of an innocent geek, no.

China has no interes in us

[sudden.zero]

other than our lower middle class buying all there cheap crap at various discount retailers (i.e. Wal-Mart,Target, you fill in the blank). If they wanted to do any real damage to us they would simply quit buying our debt but then who would buy as much of their cheap junk as dumb lower middle class Americans do!?! Not to mention that if they really wanted to do some damage they could quit buying our debt and quit selling us cheap junk then our country would collapse. We simply do not have the manufacturing ability that we once did because we got lazy and cheap. If China were to completely pull out of the US right now we would be in a world of hurt for many years.

Re:Couldn't Happen

[CBravo]

since you guys beat the Russians financially I think that is debatable.

Re:Still doesn't make it a non-threat.

[Z00L00K]

I would say that it's not only the US power grid that's vulnerable. It's power grids and users all over the world that are vulnerable to threats.

• Large exposure - often in inaccessible terrain.
• Key points in rural areas with little protection.
• Very visible installations makes them easy to map.
• Number of persons knowing the large scale circuits in their head are few.
• Societies highly dependent on electrical power.
• Availability of material (especially large transformers) and competence for repairs of major lines are limited.
• Alternate routes may already be running at maximum capacity.

So I would say that the report hardly surprises me. Coordinated attacks on power lines in areas hard to access in a part of a country and then a follow up with some anti-aircraft weapons to take down the maintenance helicopters and you have a big problem. Take out a number of transformers and you can really sit back and see that those oddballs insisting on collecting firewood are the survivors while the rest are running around in circles. Especially tough in the middle of the winter.

Secondary effects of a prolonged power outage would be telecom breakdowns, water and sewage plant failures, failure to get fuels for vehicles etc. Those are just the direct and obvious effects. The economy would be taking a major hit at the same time.

Just figure out if there were a coordinated attack that cut off electricity to many major cities at the same time. It would make what happened in New Orleans when Katrina had struck just an exercise.

Re:Still doesn't make it a non-threat.

[AdamWill]

"Take out a number of transformers and you can really sit back and see that those oddballs insisting on collecting firewood are the survivors while the rest are running around in circles. Especially tough in the middle of the winter."

This is going to derail the discussion massively, but I read a neat article recently which pointed out that survivalists, preparers etc are sort of missing the bigger picture. If the world goes to hell in a handcart and you're the one sitting pretty on a two hundred year supply of tinned goods, what that makes you is a _really juicy target_ for all the people who don't have a two hundred year supply of tinned goods. Sure, the nuttier survivalists have lots of guns, but this is America, right? Not only the survivalists have guns. Wouldn't be hard for an angry mob to get sufficiently tooled-up to take out and subsequently rob the stores of any given well-prepared paranoiac...

so, yeah, in the long run, it's all a bit of a waste of effort =)

Re:Couldn't Happen

[dkf]

And I question that we "beat them financially"

While I don't know about "financially" (since the USSR didn't organize its finances in an easily comparable way) it's reasonably clear that it was economically where the USA and its allies were ahead of the USSR (and their allies). In particular, the west was able to sustain a higher level of military spending without crippling the rest of its economy.

Of course, we only really knew how bad things had got through the '70s and early '80s quite a bit later, and that wasn't a period when the Maniacs of Wall Street weren't so thoroughly set on the course which lead to the current recession. 20 years is quite a long time in human affairs.