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United States Power Security

Washington State Power-Station Attacks Are Latest Assault on Grid (bloomberg.com) 116

Posted by msmash from the security-woes dept.
Four power substations in Washington State were attacked on Christmas Day, disrupting service to thousands of residents, just weeks after gunfire at electricity facilities in North Carolina prompted an investigation by the FBI. From a report: Law enforcement agencies are now investigating at least eight attacks on power stations in four states in the past month that have underscored the vulnerability of the nation's power grid. It remains unknown if they were connected. In the most recent incidents outside of Tacoma, Washington, thousands were left without power after vandals forced their way into four substations and damaged equipment, in one case leading to a fire, according to the Pierce County Sheriff's Department. In all, 14,000 people were left without power from that attacks on substations owned by Tacoma Public Utilities and Puget Sound Energy, according to the sheriff's office, which said most power has since been restored.
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Washington State Power-Station Attacks Are Latest Assault on Grid More

Washington State Power-Station Attacks Are Latest Assault on Grid

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  • Considering they haven't caught a SINGLE person in their investigations, it forces you to draw conclusions about what's happening other than these are random copycat lunatics.

    • and, well, so far yeah it's sus. Everyone in those communities knows everyone else. The last one had a women implying she knew who did it and the local sheriff, who'd been photographed with her at political events, didn't look into it.

      The FBI is involved and they could give a fuck about corrupt small town sheriffs, and those power companies are pissed. Expect these people to be found and get the book thrown at them.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by sound+vision ( 884283 )

        Russians. The airbase near Moscow was attacked again last night, the same night as this power attack.

        Just like the 2 Russian airbases were attacked immediately before the last substation attack. (And the attack on the Keystone pipeline that same week, which is barely being reported.)

        It's really starting to look like every time there is an attack on Russian soil, there's a retaliatory strike on US energy infrastructure within the next day or so.

        People keep telling me "they wouldn't dare." But they didn't ha

        • Re:It's usually incel, kgb putins (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Yep, Putin is definitely 200% behind this. On his "off nights," he is actually in control of KGB Cyber Command. Fueled by White Russians Putin Style (coffee with vodka in lieu of creamer), he loudly hacks at a mechanical keyboard in a filthy, old Stalingrad decommissioned munitions factory in the late hours of the night. He stops to ponder for a minute--that Corsair backlit Soviet Control Panel of all those Cyrillic letters flashing from red to white to pink to blue to orange in some homosexual European fas

      • Tacoma is a "small community"? 14K people were without power (out of ~200K). Or are you talking about the N Carolina incidents?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Well, this is pretty much the normal modus on terrorism by right-wing extremists. Too much of the "law enforcement" community suddenly discovers they do not actually care about the law and start aiding and abetting terrorists. These things only get investigated properly when they get too large or when powerful outside interests force an investigation. Let us hope the power companies are pissed enough to not put up with this crap by "law enforcement" and kicks them hard. Because this type of terrorism usuall

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        yeah, a recurring problem with these investigations that accelerationism tend to have close ties to local law enforcement, who stand to benefit from such anti government activity.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Chas ( 5144 )

        Uh huh.

        The Fed is basically corrupt and inept.

        If there's enough power and money in it for them, they won't find shit.

  • More likely they tried to steal a bunch of copper.
    • I welcome you to blow up a transformer or two and then be stupid enough to touch it.

      And you obiously don't know much about power infrastructure: there is very little copper used these days. There isn't enough to make it worth it. Aluminum? It's going to be way too much effort to get it, and someone WILL catch you before you have grabbed enough to cash out.

      • Re:Tacoma? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Monday December 26, 2022 @03:02PM (#63159046)

        They did indicate it was a burglary, so apparently *something* was stolen. For all we know, it was just spare equipment or tools lying around. Subsequent attacks seemed to be nothing but vandalism, though. Maybe they just didn't find anything worth stealing there.

        Given that there was no obvious political or social target, except that it was Christmas, it's hard to find a good motivation here, except wanting to cause trouble for others. My guess would be simple theft with the vandalism as a copycat, with the thought it may blur the intent a bit. But who knows. Feel back for people with knocked out power on Christmas. At least it wasn't quite as cold on Christmas as it was a few days earlier - or at least that was true in the Seattle area.

    • No. People don't go trying to steal coper from transformers or substations in general. There are far FAR easier ways to steal it from utility companies.

      • You must not live in the PNW.

        It's a real problem here. People have been killed stealing the HV wires, people have been killed breaking into substations and trying to steal wiring. Perhaps where you are it's not prevalent, but here thieves are more determined.

  • Find then destroy the perps by any effective means.

  • #SEKKUNDAMENDMINT, amirite?

  • I hope they find these dumb asses fast, all this will do is force electric companies to secure all these sites and force them to raise their rates to pay for the extra security. Electricity is expensive enough already as it is. And if someone is harmed by these outages, I hope additional charges are levied on these people.

    .

  • Better, non-paywalled story (Score:5, Informative)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday December 26, 2022 @02:30PM (#63158904)

    Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/vandals-hit-fourth-pierce-county-substation-in-christmas-day-attacks/ [seattletimes.com]

    And no, responding to a post higher up - Graham/Kapowsin (location of this latest attack) hasn't been even remotely rural for 20+ years. It's the very definition of "suburban sprawl". It's also a rather conservative area, lots of Boeing engineer types.

    • I just looked the two towns from the article up on Google maps and those are not what I would call suburbs. A suburb is a bunch of nice neat little lines of houses. Just a quick cursory glance over a satellite image of both towns shows way too much green and way too few houses to qualify for a suburb let alone a city. And it's not the kind of palatial estates that I would associate with wealthy tax Dodges like ranches and whatnot.

      I'm not trying to say rural people are inherently bad but what I am saying

      • I live less than 20 miles from there, and know the area very well.

      • West coast suburbs aren't necessarily wall to wall subdivisions like east coast suburbs tend to be. Density pressure drops off a bit faster.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sfcat ( 872532 )

        I'm not trying to say rural people are inherently bad but

        You think that as you eat something grown in a rural area, use resources extracted from a rural area and look down on the people who live in rural areas. Hard to believe they don't vote the way you think they should.

  • Destroying power systems as a form of attack has been in the news for several months already. And it is easy to see who benefits from acts that disrupt electrical power for US industry, and especially disrupt electrical heating during a massive deadly cold winter storm. The upside is that these are disorganized efforts, with little coordinated activity over larger areas. The downside is that these might only be probing attacks.
    • Even if it isn't organized, the news leaks of such event will lead to copycat attacks, and standalone complex attacks are also inevitable.

  • Texas doesn't need someone, or a group of people, to go round and shoot up electrical substations. They just need to keep doing what they're doing and never learn anything. The entire state faced electricity shortages [newsweek.com] over the weekend. Because, you know, they learned their lesson from 2021 and upgraded and hardened their production capabilities.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No worse than New England: https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2... [hotair.com]
    • What they did was ease pollution rules for the period. There were no blackouts or even requests to conserve, unlike TVA and northeast. It was smooth sailing as I expected. There were some blips in austin as usual as the green mentality here struggles to keep trees trimmed. Mine blipped a couple times but a few blocks from me had a 2 or 3 hour outage. ERCOT had zero blips. I almost laughed at the outset of the cold as they had pumped up reserves (power that can be added to the grid instantly) to 10GW. That w

  • Beware of AssUming who dunnit. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Monday December 26, 2022 @03:14PM (#63159102)

    For example the FBI chose not to let the public know it knew North Vietnamese and Cuban trainers heavily supported the Weather Underground operations in CONUS. This thesis is an interesting read especially in light of recent events in Ukraine.

    While the Weather Underground portion is most relevant the Lawrence of Arabia and WWII Greek partisan warfare examples will interest history nerds:

    BREAKING OTHER PEOPLEâ(TM)S TOYS: SABOTAGE IN A MULTIPOLAR WORLD

    https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs... [dtic.mil]

    "Abstract: This thesis explores the value of sabotage as a strategic tool in a multipolar world. More specifically, it examines if sabotage can play a role in imposing costs on competitors, limiting escalation, and shortening the duration of conflict. The return of multipolarity to the international system and the proliferation of advanced military capabilities has raised specters of doubt regarding conventional U.S. military methods of deterrence and coercion as well as the United States technological overmatch. This thesis argues that U.S. competitors military technologies and capabilities possess a grave vulnerability in that they rely heavily on specific critical infrastructure that is difficult to protect and repair. If these critical pieces of infrastructure are affected, competitors are incapable of effectively fielding or employing their forces. Historical case study analysis is used to identify past sabotage campaigns impact on strategic operations, validate sabotages potential in the modern world, and identify best practices for employing saboteurs. Finally, this analysis suggests the revival of sabotage as an option for engaging with bellicose states."

    • The thing is we already knew back then that there were substantial potentially violent left-wing groups in America. Those groups haven't existed in almost 50 years.

      We also know which groups have been talking left and right (well, realistically right) about hitting power stations and how to do the most damage to a power station.

      Again I'm reminded of that sketch with the guy in the hot dog suit and a hot dog car that crashed into a building. It's pretty obvious it was the guy in the hot dog suit.

  • Or are they too busy monitoring social media sites for terms of service violations?

    "as of 2020, there were so many former FBI employees — "Bu alumni" — working at Twitter that they had created their own private Slack channel and a crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals."
    https://twitter.com/Shellenber... [twitter.com]

  • Probably perpetrated by nil-wits that believe a certain lie about a certain election being stolen. These people need to be found and then put behind bars for a few decades, like any other terrorists.

  • Which is specifically a break-in to an unoccupied property, but the media headlines labeled it as an "attack". Sometimes the headlines read "attack", but the article read "burglary". Not sure what's going on here and the two terms aren't necessarily exclusive, but it makes you wonder if some of the reporting isn't agenda driven.

    • Headline writers aren't always the story writers - typically it's the bosses rewriting the headlines, when it's done. And the headline writers likely see attracting the maximum number of eyeballs possible as part of their job.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Burglary vs attack.

      You'd have to look at the details of the current Washington legal code. But property crimes (such as burglary) are very low on law enforcement's priority list. Basically just wave at them and let them go.

      And if they use firearms (even if they are prohibited felons), return those to them on their way out. Because that will push the firearm crime statistics the way politicians want to see them go.

    • There is an agenda, and that is to get eyeballs to look at the media in order to sell ads.

  • As if US power stations need attackers to break down.

  • Um, this may be nothing? remember church fires? (Score:3)

    by bruceki ( 5147215 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @01:12AM (#63160510)
    In the 90s there was a lot of concern about arson of churches; they even passed a federal law in 1996 to prevent those fires. But when you look at the numbers of churches burned there wasn't a big correlation. Turns out that churches burn down pretty regularly all over the country, and older churches in poorer neighborhoods burn down more frequently than more modern churches built to current code. yes, a couple of substations got shot up, but if you've ever been in a rural area there's bullet holes in virtually every road sign and a lot of the mailboxes and just about anything else. I'm not surprised that a substation gets shot up now and then. What would surprise me is if they did not. Substations, with their ceramic insulators and barrels of oil (transformers) and wires and so on are an attractive target to bored rural residents while they drink beer. It doesn't have to be a massive right-wing conspiracy. it can be a bored teenager with one or two clips of ammo.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It happened. [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Idiot. I grew up in rural America and no, there are not bullet holes in everything. Three different substations were attacked on the same day. This isn't just a fucking coincidence.

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