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Sniper attack on Utah substation highlights grid vulnerability

26 points by cossatot 10y ago

kogepathic 10y ago
It will never be economically feasible to secure the grid from physical attack. It is too expensive to bury the distribution network, and while isolated attacks like this are extremely unfortunate, the reality is that they are infrequent enough that physically securing the equipment will cost more than the economic losses to the energy company. The state of industrial security is laughable, and electronic attacks are much easier to accomplish than physical attacks, simply because you can target geographically distributed locations simultaneously. It's unfortunate that someone thought it was fun to shoot up some transformers, but just look at the article: up to $1 million in costs for the operator in this incident, versus an estimate of hundreds of billions in damages due to a cyber attack.
- Eridrus 10y ago
  Preventative measures may be costly, but maybe we should have something like shotspotter + video drones deployed so that these people can at least be caught and hopefully it will act as a deterrent.
  - DanielBMarkham 10y ago
    I imagine that this is exactly what we'll see developing over the next decade or so: electronic sensors to identify the attacker, and/or provide a little bit of early warning when an attack is imminent. When for only a few thousand dollars you can permanently equip against millions in potential losses? It's a no-brainer.
  - DougN7 10y ago
    What you describe will require increased surveillance. I don't disagree with you, but this is exactly how Big Brother and the surveillance state comes about.
  - LyndsySimon 10y ago
    That would be ineffective for a number of reasons - chief among them being that shotspotter is largely ineffective, and that substations are often located in rural areas where gunshots are both common and expected occurrences.
    - Eridrus 10y ago
      I had a little bit of a google for shotspotter effectiveness info. It seems like it has a false positive problem (which you allude to) and a response time problem. The first problem seems almost irrelevant if the response cost is low (because you have drones), the latter problem may be more of an issue. Recent drones can get 45 mph, so depending on what kind of range you expect snipers to have, it's probably possible to have a ring of them around the area such that their 2 min range only just overlaps and be able to cover ~3-4 miles around an installation. Is 2 minutes too slow of a response time for these facilities? I don't know. Rural areas will be much easier to secure than urban areas though.
teh_klev 10y ago
Direct link to the Energy Wire article which this post is largely based on: http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060043920 http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060043920
dogma1138 10y ago
Here is a simpler attack vector. Steal a garbage truck, ram a substation. You can't protect the grid form physical attacks.
- nradov 10y ago
  Actually a truck ramming would cause much less damage to most substations. Usually they have decent fences and a bunch of steel and concrete structures around the transformers which would make ramming pretty difficult. The shooting attacks were so destructive because punching holes in transformers allowed coolant to leak out, forcing those transformers to shut down. Repairing such damage is a lengthy and expensive process. Substation transformers are large, heavy, and complex; you can't fix the damage just by slapping on a quick patch. And buying a replacement takes months.
  - LyndsySimon 10y ago
    A quick look through Google Maps leads me to believe that this is most likely the substation where it happened: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Page,+AZ+86040/@37.1431342,-112.0661026,438m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8734135bfdcd758f:0x6e982f5153384e39!8m2!3d36.9147222!4d-111.4558333?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/place/Page,+AZ+86040/@37.1431342... There's no perimeter security there to speak of - just a chain-link fence, and no bollards or anything else to keep someone from driving over it. There are plenty of attack vectors available for this sort of thing, though. I'm not sure it's even possible to effectively protect something like this.

26 points by cossatot 10y ago

It will never be economically feasible to secure the grid from physical attack. It is too expensive to bury the distribution network, and while isolated attacks like this are extremely unfortunate, the reality is that they are infrequent enough that physically securing the equipment will cost more than the economic losses to the energy company. The state of industrial security is laughable, and electronic attacks are much easier to accomplish than physical attacks, simply because you can target geographically distributed locations simultaneously. It's unfortunate that someone thought it was fun to shoot up some transformers, but just look at the article: up to $1 million in costs for the operator in this incident, versus an estimate of hundreds of billions in damages due to a cyber attack.

Eridrus 10y ago
Preventative measures may be costly, but maybe we should have something like shotspotter + video drones deployed so that these people can at least be caught and hopefully it will act as a deterrent.
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  I imagine that this is exactly what we'll see developing over the next decade or so: electronic sensors to identify the attacker, and/or provide a little bit of early warning when an attack is imminent. When for only a few thousand dollars you can permanently equip against millions in potential losses? It's a no-brainer.
- DougN7 10y ago
  What you describe will require increased surveillance. I don't disagree with you, but this is exactly how Big Brother and the surveillance state comes about.
- LyndsySimon 10y ago
  That would be ineffective for a number of reasons - chief among them being that shotspotter is largely ineffective, and that substations are often located in rural areas where gunshots are both common and expected occurrences.
  - Eridrus 10y ago
    I had a little bit of a google for shotspotter effectiveness info. It seems like it has a false positive problem (which you allude to) and a response time problem. The first problem seems almost irrelevant if the response cost is low (because you have drones), the latter problem may be more of an issue. Recent drones can get 45 mph, so depending on what kind of range you expect snipers to have, it's probably possible to have a ring of them around the area such that their 2 min range only just overlaps and be able to cover ~3-4 miles around an installation. Is 2 minutes too slow of a response time for these facilities? I don't know. Rural areas will be much easier to secure than urban areas though.

teh_klev 10y ago

Direct link to the Energy Wire article which this post is largely based on: http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060043920 http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060043920

dogma1138 10y ago

Here is a simpler attack vector. Steal a garbage truck, ram a substation. You can't protect the grid form physical attacks.

nradov 10y ago
Actually a truck ramming would cause much less damage to most substations. Usually they have decent fences and a bunch of steel and concrete structures around the transformers which would make ramming pretty difficult. The shooting attacks were so destructive because punching holes in transformers allowed coolant to leak out, forcing those transformers to shut down. Repairing such damage is a lengthy and expensive process. Substation transformers are large, heavy, and complex; you can't fix the damage just by slapping on a quick patch. And buying a replacement takes months.
- LyndsySimon 10y ago
  A quick look through Google Maps leads me to believe that this is most likely the substation where it happened: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Page,+AZ+86040/@37.1431342,-112.0661026,438m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8734135bfdcd758f:0x6e982f5153384e39!8m2!3d36.9147222!4d-111.4558333?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/place/Page,+AZ+86040/@37.1431342... There's no perimeter security there to speak of - just a chain-link fence, and no bollards or anything else to keep someone from driving over it. There are plenty of attack vectors available for this sort of thing, though. I'm not sure it's even possible to effectively protect something like this.