5 ms·

This whole article seems to basically boil down to this: >And in the meantime, a few stronger locks, fences, and security cameras on the doors of the turbines

This whole article seems to basically boil down to this: >And in the meantime, a few stronger locks, fences, and security cameras on the doors of the turbines themselves would make physical attacks far more difficult. I mean, any time someone has physical access to your machines, you're going to lose the security fight. Full stop. At that point, if the goal is damage or extortion, and you've walked into an unguarded and poorly secured building (or turbine), a little bit of dynamite is a WAY better bet than a network compromise.

brianwawok 9y ago
Maybe? I mean if I wanted to blow up 1000 turbines with dynamite, I would need: * Physically drive to 1000 turbines * Purchases 1000 sticks of dynamite * Physically walk up to 1000 turbines * Set up some kind of ransom remote detonator that I could set off * Somehow monitor all 1000 turbines to see no one could defuse my bomb * Not blow up myself while setting up the bombs Vs if you could send 1 packet from Russia that told the turbine to go "full speed reverse" that could shred the device? You are going to argue that those two things are the same level of effort, and we shouldn't guard against the second due to how easy the first is?
- bluedino 9y ago
  If you have dynamite and want to take a windfarm out, you're better off taking out a few towers in a 138kV transmission line or the substation the turbines all connect to.
  - jws 9y ago
    Dynamite is not required. In the 1970s in Minnesota angry farmers destroyed about a dozen transmission towers with nothing but wrenches. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU_project_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU_project_controversy
    - rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
      >Protesters covered themselves in pig manure and asked the police to arrest them. Now that's a piece of civil disobedience history I'm never gonna forget.
    - Neliquat 9y ago
      Ahh, the bolt weevils. Classic.
  - bluGill 9y ago
    Depends on how long you want to take them out. A couple towers or a substation is easy to replace, they will have a temporary tower up in a few hours. They have this ability because a tornado could take out a few towers. Likewise substations fail once in a while. If you take out one wind turbine: they break often enough that it doesn't matter. They assume a few will break for mechanical reasons and that is accounted for, it hurts profits a little but probably less than their worst case failure budget has planned for. They will fix it sometime in the next few years. If you take out a lot of wind turbines, things get hard, replacing each one will take time: factories are generally booked months in advance and crews that can do this job is also not readily available. Don't forget though that everything you do creates an effect. Take our wind turbines and they will beef up security. You are taking the risk that they notice your activities and put in some security system that catches you.
    - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
      > they will have a temporary tower up in a few hours. This entirely depends on location. A lot of major WECC locations are remote and would take a crew a long time to get there. > substations fail once in a while. What do you mean by this? Usually substations are fed from diverse lines, so a single incoming line outage, or XFMR (usually N+1) failure is able to easily be absorbed.
      - bluGill 9y ago
        The transformer fails in a "ball of flame". The "flame" only lasts for a second (probably just a spark?), but it is visible for miles. I don't know how much redundancy they have. I know that my power went out for a few hours a couple months ago when a substation failed. I've seen the "ball of flame" (probably just a spark, it only lasted a second) that knocked out power for a small city.
- cr1895 9y ago
  >Vs if you could send 1 packet from Russia that told the turbine to go "full speed reverse" that could shred the device? Just want to point out that there's no such thing as turning on a wind turbine at full speed reverse. It's not a fan. Potential mechanisms for damaging one include mucking with the brakes (as in the article), changing blade pitch, disabling some kind of cooling system, etc.
  - sp332 9y ago
    Reminds me of this little April Fools video from Google Holland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAwL0O5nXe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAwL0O5nXe0
  - cyberfart 9y ago
    Though I'd expect this system to be mechanical and not connected, you could also disable the limiters and let the turbine destroy itself with high rpm if the winds are sufficient. Not sure how often they are.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > Just want to point out that there's no such thing as turning on a wind turbine at full speed reverse. It's not a fan. Big AC windmills actually are started up as fans with their blades set to 'coarse' for maximum torque. What happens is that the grid is used to get them up to speed, they become sync-locked to the grid (same frequency) and then any excess power the wind imparts to the machine will be passed off to the grid. If the machine would drop slightly below the 0 line of power produced the power company would still operate it as a fan until this situation persists for too long and the losses accumulate, then the mill is set to 'coarse' if the pitch is variable and allowed to coast to a stop or some low RPM waiting for the wind to pick up again. All kinds of trickery (variable pitch, DC systems, maximum-power-point-tracking) and so on is used to expand the useful envelope. So yes, they're also fans. But mechanical safety is a big thing in windmill design and most likely some FPGA or other hardware lock-out would stop you from being able to command a typical windmill from becoming an 8 MW desk fan. Hurricane on demand, the evil part of me now wants to know what would happen. At a guess it wouldn't do much because the mechanism is rated to produce an X amount of power so it likely can handle sourcing it as well as long as enough air flows over the coils of the generator. As soon as those get too hot the failsafe will kick in again and the mill goes flat (totally neutral blade setting, the machine won't be moved by the wind like that) and stops.
- arm85 9y ago
  "1 packet from Russia"? This requires physical access to 1 wind turbine in a networked Wind farm, which is going to be at most 250 turbines and I'd be really impressed if they were all networked together. "Full speed reverse?" You could perhaps increase fatigue overtime. Some wind turbines can start spinning to get to a more favorable position in their power curve, I'm not aware of utility grade ones being able to do that, or go "full speed" enough to cause physical damage. I have some experience with network access in a UK wind farm. They were extremely paranoid about network security.
  - brianwawok 9y ago
    Sorry I am not well versed in the rest APIs of wind turbines. But based on how most of such things, I would suspect there are switches you could flip that would make very bad things happen to the turbine... if the API is literally foolproof, then great. But an API that can cause no damage does not make a lot of sense to be paired to a device that has poor network security.
    - arm85 9y ago
      REST API? Wind turbine SCADA systems use interfaces like modbus or canbus, etc. Security in these systems are dedicated network circuits and firewalls configured to only allow access on a specific port, from a specific IP address on a specific port.
      - forgottenpass 9y ago
        Nah man, I have it on good authority that a node.js frontend to a series of Rust microservices is the best design for these control systems. Quit joshing me that anything else is ever used in any domain.
        noir_lord 9y ago
        Node.js? Old technology our fusion reactors all run TypeScript compiled down to WebAssembly with some Elm interop. Mostly the Elm is there so our devs can go to conferences and look down on others for not using Elm, I mean why else would you adopt new technology if not for that?.
- horsawlarway 9y ago
  You're skipping the whole damn point: physical access was required. At that point, there ain't shit you can do to stop an attacker with software based security. A human being, sitting in front of the hardware, is going to win. Also, it's not that easy to damage these things. There certainly are cases where you can add wear and tear, decrease life span, and if the weather is cooperating, cause catastrophic failure. But it's certainly not a sure thing, and in most of the failure modes they outlined, you'd have plenty of time to shut them down and get a tech on site. A little bit of dynamite (or any sort of improvised explosive) is cheap, readily available, and requires the same physical access, only it happens to be a far more reliable way to cause failure...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

brianwawok 9y ago

Maybe? I mean if I wanted to blow up 1000 turbines with dynamite, I would need: * Physically drive to 1000 turbines * Purchases 1000 sticks of dynamite * Physically walk up to 1000 turbines * Set up some kind of ransom remote detonator that I could set off * Somehow monitor all 1000 turbines to see no one could defuse my bomb * Not blow up myself while setting up the bombs Vs if you could send 1 packet from Russia that told the turbine to go "full speed reverse" that could shred the device? You are going to argue that those two things are the same level of effort, and we shouldn't guard against the second due to how easy the first is?

bluedino 9y ago
If you have dynamite and want to take a windfarm out, you're better off taking out a few towers in a 138kV transmission line or the substation the turbines all connect to.
- jws 9y ago
  Dynamite is not required. In the 1970s in Minnesota angry farmers destroyed about a dozen transmission towers with nothing but wrenches. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU_project_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU_project_controversy
  - rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
    >Protesters covered themselves in pig manure and asked the police to arrest them. Now that's a piece of civil disobedience history I'm never gonna forget.
  - Neliquat 9y ago
    Ahh, the bolt weevils. Classic.
- bluGill 9y ago
  Depends on how long you want to take them out. A couple towers or a substation is easy to replace, they will have a temporary tower up in a few hours. They have this ability because a tornado could take out a few towers. Likewise substations fail once in a while. If you take out one wind turbine: they break often enough that it doesn't matter. They assume a few will break for mechanical reasons and that is accounted for, it hurts profits a little but probably less than their worst case failure budget has planned for. They will fix it sometime in the next few years. If you take out a lot of wind turbines, things get hard, replacing each one will take time: factories are generally booked months in advance and crews that can do this job is also not readily available. Don't forget though that everything you do creates an effect. Take our wind turbines and they will beef up security. You are taking the risk that they notice your activities and put in some security system that catches you.
  - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
    > they will have a temporary tower up in a few hours. This entirely depends on location. A lot of major WECC locations are remote and would take a crew a long time to get there. > substations fail once in a while. What do you mean by this? Usually substations are fed from diverse lines, so a single incoming line outage, or XFMR (usually N+1) failure is able to easily be absorbed.
    - bluGill 9y ago
      The transformer fails in a "ball of flame". The "flame" only lasts for a second (probably just a spark?), but it is visible for miles. I don't know how much redundancy they have. I know that my power went out for a few hours a couple months ago when a substation failed. I've seen the "ball of flame" (probably just a spark, it only lasted a second) that knocked out power for a small city.
cr1895 9y ago
>Vs if you could send 1 packet from Russia that told the turbine to go "full speed reverse" that could shred the device? Just want to point out that there's no such thing as turning on a wind turbine at full speed reverse. It's not a fan. Potential mechanisms for damaging one include mucking with the brakes (as in the article), changing blade pitch, disabling some kind of cooling system, etc.
- sp332 9y ago
  Reminds me of this little April Fools video from Google Holland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAwL0O5nXe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAwL0O5nXe0
- cyberfart 9y ago
  Though I'd expect this system to be mechanical and not connected, you could also disable the limiters and let the turbine destroy itself with high rpm if the winds are sufficient. Not sure how often they are.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > Just want to point out that there's no such thing as turning on a wind turbine at full speed reverse. It's not a fan. Big AC windmills actually are started up as fans with their blades set to 'coarse' for maximum torque. What happens is that the grid is used to get them up to speed, they become sync-locked to the grid (same frequency) and then any excess power the wind imparts to the machine will be passed off to the grid. If the machine would drop slightly below the 0 line of power produced the power company would still operate it as a fan until this situation persists for too long and the losses accumulate, then the mill is set to 'coarse' if the pitch is variable and allowed to coast to a stop or some low RPM waiting for the wind to pick up again. All kinds of trickery (variable pitch, DC systems, maximum-power-point-tracking) and so on is used to expand the useful envelope. So yes, they're also fans. But mechanical safety is a big thing in windmill design and most likely some FPGA or other hardware lock-out would stop you from being able to command a typical windmill from becoming an 8 MW desk fan. Hurricane on demand, the evil part of me now wants to know what would happen. At a guess it wouldn't do much because the mechanism is rated to produce an X amount of power so it likely can handle sourcing it as well as long as enough air flows over the coils of the generator. As soon as those get too hot the failsafe will kick in again and the mill goes flat (totally neutral blade setting, the machine won't be moved by the wind like that) and stops.
arm85 9y ago
"1 packet from Russia"? This requires physical access to 1 wind turbine in a networked Wind farm, which is going to be at most 250 turbines and I'd be really impressed if they were all networked together. "Full speed reverse?" You could perhaps increase fatigue overtime. Some wind turbines can start spinning to get to a more favorable position in their power curve, I'm not aware of utility grade ones being able to do that, or go "full speed" enough to cause physical damage. I have some experience with network access in a UK wind farm. They were extremely paranoid about network security.
- brianwawok 9y ago
  Sorry I am not well versed in the rest APIs of wind turbines. But based on how most of such things, I would suspect there are switches you could flip that would make very bad things happen to the turbine... if the API is literally foolproof, then great. But an API that can cause no damage does not make a lot of sense to be paired to a device that has poor network security.
  - arm85 9y ago
    REST API? Wind turbine SCADA systems use interfaces like modbus or canbus, etc. Security in these systems are dedicated network circuits and firewalls configured to only allow access on a specific port, from a specific IP address on a specific port.
    - forgottenpass 9y ago
      Nah man, I have it on good authority that a node.js frontend to a series of Rust microservices is the best design for these control systems. Quit joshing me that anything else is ever used in any domain.
      - noir_lord 9y ago
        Node.js? Old technology our fusion reactors all run TypeScript compiled down to WebAssembly with some Elm interop. Mostly the Elm is there so our devs can go to conferences and look down on others for not using Elm, I mean why else would you adopt new technology if not for that?.
horsawlarway 9y ago
You're skipping the whole damn point: physical access was required. At that point, there ain't shit you can do to stop an attacker with software based security. A human being, sitting in front of the hardware, is going to win. Also, it's not that easy to damage these things. There certainly are cases where you can add wear and tear, decrease life span, and if the weather is cooperating, cause catastrophic failure. But it's certainly not a sure thing, and in most of the failure modes they outlined, you'd have plenty of time to shut them down and get a tech on site. A little bit of dynamite (or any sort of improvised explosive) is cheap, readily available, and requires the same physical access, only it happens to be a far more reliable way to cause failure...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]