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I'm all for wind energy and Ukraine but the connection to Russia seems flimsy. The article mentions the timing of the attacks (right after the war began) as pro

I'm all for wind energy and Ukraine but the connection to Russia seems flimsy. The article mentions the timing of the attacks (right after the war began) as proof of Russia's involvement. Just in December 2021 Uptime Wind Energy Podcast was talking about [1] a cyber attack on Vestas. So it's not like it was unprecedented before the war. I get that 1 of the attacks was by a group that publicly supports Russia. And I get that Russia has huge vested interests against wind energy. [1] https://weatherguardwind.com/cyber-resilience-byron-martin/ https://weatherguardwind.com/cyber-resilience-byron-martin/

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
This is "current politics" 20 years ago, the blame would fall on "big oil", then it was north korea, now russia... ...and in reality, it might have been an angry former employee who just happens to know all the default passwords set everywhere. Russia basically gains nothing by doing this, except even worse relations with the germans (it's not like the germans will say "oh, the russians hacked us, we better buy their gas now")
- _kbh_ 5y ago
  Russia gets to rattle their cyber sabre is what this lets them do. Why do they rattle their sabre? because it has been literally the only thing they are doing in response to this war. Since day one all Russia has done is sabre rattle about the war.
- boringg 5y ago
  Could be but super unlikely. Also could be an Alien but the probabilities are low on that possibility as well.
  - pkdpic 5y ago
    A time traveller trying to save us from some unseen future disaster caused by wind energy seems at least as likely as aliens.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Now I'm trying to creatively imagine a disaster caused by wind energy? Near human extinction from all of the cancer the windmills create? World wild exitinction from birds from all of them being killed by the windmills? Near worldwide deafness in all humans from the humming they generate? I'm just running through all of the right wing consipriacies I've heard about. I'm not creative enough to come up with that nonsense.
      - heavyset_go 5y ago
        Morbo the Annihilator has finally had enough of people building windmills to try to keep the Earth cool with big fans.
      - KMag 5y ago
        The California Condor is the key to ending the 2073 pandemic. Their extinction due to wind farms in 2065 is about to lead to extinction of the human race. They discover a time travel mechanism that only works for energy, not matter. They can't travel back in time and just grab some condors or open a time portal underneath an unsuspecting condor, since the portals don't work with matter. They open a time portal for radio waves and use a 5G modem to sabotage wind farms in 2022. It turns out that all of the hysteria against 5G was an attempt by a psychopathic dictator in the future to end humanity by taking down all of the 5G towers to prevent the sabotage of the wind farms.
        bigDinosaur 5y ago
        Although you're joking, it's important to note that the angle of birds being killed by wind farms is a tactic used by people who want to see wind projects fail or not happen but want to dress this up in environmentalist sounding language. It's not that birds are never killed by wind turbines, it's that this is scrutiny only applied to wind turbines by the fake-environmentalists when they'll happily accept the environmental destruction of other methods of power generation. Close to heart because I know of a major wind project cancelled in my area due to the government commissioning an 'environmental review' which concluded the whole project had to be canned because it'd endanger a parrot. Meanwhile, the logging continued unabated...
- pkaye 5y ago
  A former worker of three companies?
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    Or working at one scada company that built the system for all three. I'm just saying that it's convenient to just blame russia for everything without any proof.
    - FrenchDevRemote 5y ago
      They have a habit of doing it(for years/decades) and it would really help them if people couldn't rely on other sources of energy than what they're selling. So, who else?Who has a motive and the capabilities to do this?
      - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
        I mean.. what does russia gain? Even worse political relations? Germany will fix it system in a day or two, and then what? Does anyone actually expect them to ditch wind power and buy russian gas after russia hacking them? Realistically... by stirring the shit up in europe, the country that gains the most is.. well.. USA. Do something, blame russia, make EU economy worse, worsen the relations, make european countries stop production due to energy crisis, sell them american products, and if things get even worse, sell weapons, maybe even to both sides if things get desparate enough, watch europe destroyed again while their own economy gets a great boost.
        geeB 5y ago
        The same could be said about the invasion in the first place though, after the worsening from 2014, even if they managed to pull off the initial plan. It seems more of a response/warning to the sending of weapons that has a tiny bit of teeth but not enough to escalate further.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- dylan604 5y ago
  To be fair, we blamed Russia before we blamed North Korea for a long time. Russia just fell out of favor as the whipping boy, but what was old is new again. Remember when Russia was our "friend"? With friends like these, who needs enemies?
  - kadoban 5y ago
    > whipping boy A whipping boy is innocent. Russia is largely not. > Remember when Russia was our "friend"? No.
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      But what exactly does russia gain? will the germans say "oh no, they hacked us, better buy their gas now"?
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        > A hacker who manages to infect the industrial equipment that controls wind turbines could manipulate the machines’ brakes to stop power production, said Trond Solbert, managing director for cybersecurity at Norwegian risk-management company DNV GL. Do that to a couple thousand wind turbines and yes, "better buy their gas now". Even better if you do it the other direction - take the brakes off in a storm, and you get https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3tqjuvy7i0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3tqjuvy7i0. There's a lot of interest in this sort of thing. https://www.wired.com/story/how-30-lines-of-code-blew-up-27-ton-generator/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-30-lines-of-code-blew-up-27-...
        ajsnigrutin 5y ago
        Yeah... not buying it. If russia did that, it would make them even less likely to buy russian gas again... they'd probably just buy overly expensive electricity from neighboring countries and fix their wind production.
        5y ago
- smt88 5y ago
  Big Oil, North Korea (under the Kim regimes), and Russia (under Putin) are all bad actors with a history of near-total disregard for human life. I'm not sure you're making the point you think you're making.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > "oh, the russians hacked us, we better buy their gas now" Unless, as they know, the Russians know, and everybody knows, they don't have any choice in the matter. They can't replace Russian gas imports, and without them their economy would be severely crippled ( as argued by many unions, trade body representatives, etc.).
monkeybutton 5y ago
In contrast, this article makes it sound like windfarms being knocked offline was just collateral damage from the war: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/03/a-mysterious-satellite-hack-has-victims-far-beyond-ukraine/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/03/a-mys...
KMag 5y ago
I'm not sure about when the Vestas happened, but Russia likely took more than a year to plan an invasion of this size. After some sanctions following the 2014 Crimea invasion, Russia built up its foreign currency reserves to ride out sanctions, apparently Gazprom reduced natural gas holdings in Germany right before this invasion, and Russia made other preparations to stave off sanctions and/or reduce their impact. It's not unthinkable that Russia did some preliminary attacks on renewables in preparation/practice runs in the year leading up to the invasion.
- sidewndr46 5y ago
  Based on the level of success they've had, I'd say Putin was drunk and scribbled invasion on a napkin with an arrow headed south from Russia into Ukraine.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    It looks like it, but it's due to incompetence, corruption, low morale, and terrible planing, not lack of planning per se. You can plan all you want, but if you do so based on wrong assumptions, and the people who you rely on to get information for the plans, and to execute the plans, are mostly incompetent stooges chosen for loyalty, it will turn out bad.
- pydry 5y ago
  It's perfectly possible that it is Russia but hack attribution is and has always been a complete and total shitshow. If I were executing any kind of hack attacks these days I'd consider masquerading as a state actor to be standard opsec. It is way too tempting to blame state actors for a variety of reasons: * Public/shareholders will be more forgiving. * Insurance (as is the case with Sony). * Makes you seem more competent if you "know" who did it straight away. To add to that, once youve picked your culprit you kind of have to double down on it which means embarrassing evidence to the contrary uncovered later will be swept under the carpet for fear of humiliating everybody who said it was [ state ] when it was [ script kiddies in a basement ]. Thus masquerading as a state actor offers a decent amount of protection for a non state attacker coz once attribution is locked in the motivation to track you down evaporates.
kumarvvr 5y ago
Russia always has incentive to attack, because it will drive up demand for oil and gas. War is not a pre condition. Who attacks wind farms for fun anyway? It is clear that the attack is politically linked and economically motivated.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

This is "current politics" 20 years ago, the blame would fall on "big oil", then it was north korea, now russia... ...and in reality, it might have been an angry former employee who just happens to know all the default passwords set everywhere. Russia basically gains nothing by doing this, except even worse relations with the germans (it's not like the germans will say "oh, the russians hacked us, we better buy their gas now")

_kbh_ 5y ago
Russia gets to rattle their cyber sabre is what this lets them do. Why do they rattle their sabre? because it has been literally the only thing they are doing in response to this war. Since day one all Russia has done is sabre rattle about the war.
boringg 5y ago
Could be but super unlikely. Also could be an Alien but the probabilities are low on that possibility as well.
- pkdpic 5y ago
  A time traveller trying to save us from some unseen future disaster caused by wind energy seems at least as likely as aliens.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Now I'm trying to creatively imagine a disaster caused by wind energy? Near human extinction from all of the cancer the windmills create? World wild exitinction from birds from all of them being killed by the windmills? Near worldwide deafness in all humans from the humming they generate? I'm just running through all of the right wing consipriacies I've heard about. I'm not creative enough to come up with that nonsense.
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      Morbo the Annihilator has finally had enough of people building windmills to try to keep the Earth cool with big fans.
    - KMag 5y ago
      The California Condor is the key to ending the 2073 pandemic. Their extinction due to wind farms in 2065 is about to lead to extinction of the human race. They discover a time travel mechanism that only works for energy, not matter. They can't travel back in time and just grab some condors or open a time portal underneath an unsuspecting condor, since the portals don't work with matter. They open a time portal for radio waves and use a 5G modem to sabotage wind farms in 2022. It turns out that all of the hysteria against 5G was an attempt by a psychopathic dictator in the future to end humanity by taking down all of the 5G towers to prevent the sabotage of the wind farms.
      - bigDinosaur 5y ago
        Although you're joking, it's important to note that the angle of birds being killed by wind farms is a tactic used by people who want to see wind projects fail or not happen but want to dress this up in environmentalist sounding language. It's not that birds are never killed by wind turbines, it's that this is scrutiny only applied to wind turbines by the fake-environmentalists when they'll happily accept the environmental destruction of other methods of power generation. Close to heart because I know of a major wind project cancelled in my area due to the government commissioning an 'environmental review' which concluded the whole project had to be canned because it'd endanger a parrot. Meanwhile, the logging continued unabated...
pkaye 5y ago
A former worker of three companies?
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Or working at one scada company that built the system for all three. I'm just saying that it's convenient to just blame russia for everything without any proof.
  - FrenchDevRemote 5y ago
    They have a habit of doing it(for years/decades) and it would really help them if people couldn't rely on other sources of energy than what they're selling. So, who else?Who has a motive and the capabilities to do this?
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      I mean.. what does russia gain? Even worse political relations? Germany will fix it system in a day or two, and then what? Does anyone actually expect them to ditch wind power and buy russian gas after russia hacking them? Realistically... by stirring the shit up in europe, the country that gains the most is.. well.. USA. Do something, blame russia, make EU economy worse, worsen the relations, make european countries stop production due to energy crisis, sell them american products, and if things get even worse, sell weapons, maybe even to both sides if things get desparate enough, watch europe destroyed again while their own economy gets a great boost.
      - geeB 5y ago
        The same could be said about the invasion in the first place though, after the worsening from 2014, even if they managed to pull off the initial plan. It seems more of a response/warning to the sending of weapons that has a tiny bit of teeth but not enough to escalate further.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
dylan604 5y ago
To be fair, we blamed Russia before we blamed North Korea for a long time. Russia just fell out of favor as the whipping boy, but what was old is new again. Remember when Russia was our "friend"? With friends like these, who needs enemies?
- kadoban 5y ago
  > whipping boy A whipping boy is innocent. Russia is largely not. > Remember when Russia was our "friend"? No.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    But what exactly does russia gain? will the germans say "oh no, they hacked us, better buy their gas now"?
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      > A hacker who manages to infect the industrial equipment that controls wind turbines could manipulate the machines’ brakes to stop power production, said Trond Solbert, managing director for cybersecurity at Norwegian risk-management company DNV GL. Do that to a couple thousand wind turbines and yes, "better buy their gas now". Even better if you do it the other direction - take the brakes off in a storm, and you get https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3tqjuvy7i0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3tqjuvy7i0. There's a lot of interest in this sort of thing. https://www.wired.com/story/how-30-lines-of-code-blew-up-27-ton-generator/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-30-lines-of-code-blew-up-27-...
      - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
        Yeah... not buying it. If russia did that, it would make them even less likely to buy russian gas again... they'd probably just buy overly expensive electricity from neighboring countries and fix their wind production.
        5y ago
smt88 5y ago
Big Oil, North Korea (under the Kim regimes), and Russia (under Putin) are all bad actors with a history of near-total disregard for human life. I'm not sure you're making the point you think you're making.
sofixa 5y ago
> "oh, the russians hacked us, we better buy their gas now" Unless, as they know, the Russians know, and everybody knows, they don't have any choice in the matter. They can't replace Russian gas imports, and without them their economy would be severely crippled ( as argued by many unions, trade body representatives, etc.).

monkeybutton 5y ago

In contrast, this article makes it sound like windfarms being knocked offline was just collateral damage from the war: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/03/a-mysterious-satellite-hack-has-victims-far-beyond-ukraine/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/03/a-mys...

KMag 5y ago

I'm not sure about when the Vestas happened, but Russia likely took more than a year to plan an invasion of this size. After some sanctions following the 2014 Crimea invasion, Russia built up its foreign currency reserves to ride out sanctions, apparently Gazprom reduced natural gas holdings in Germany right before this invasion, and Russia made other preparations to stave off sanctions and/or reduce their impact. It's not unthinkable that Russia did some preliminary attacks on renewables in preparation/practice runs in the year leading up to the invasion.

sidewndr46 5y ago
Based on the level of success they've had, I'd say Putin was drunk and scribbled invasion on a napkin with an arrow headed south from Russia into Ukraine.
- sofixa 5y ago
  It looks like it, but it's due to incompetence, corruption, low morale, and terrible planing, not lack of planning per se. You can plan all you want, but if you do so based on wrong assumptions, and the people who you rely on to get information for the plans, and to execute the plans, are mostly incompetent stooges chosen for loyalty, it will turn out bad.
pydry 5y ago
It's perfectly possible that it is Russia but hack attribution is and has always been a complete and total shitshow. If I were executing any kind of hack attacks these days I'd consider masquerading as a state actor to be standard opsec. It is way too tempting to blame state actors for a variety of reasons: * Public/shareholders will be more forgiving. * Insurance (as is the case with Sony). * Makes you seem more competent if you "know" who did it straight away. To add to that, once youve picked your culprit you kind of have to double down on it which means embarrassing evidence to the contrary uncovered later will be swept under the carpet for fear of humiliating everybody who said it was [ state ] when it was [ script kiddies in a basement ]. Thus masquerading as a state actor offers a decent amount of protection for a non state attacker coz once attribution is locked in the motivation to track you down evaporates.

kumarvvr 5y ago

Russia always has incentive to attack, because it will drive up demand for oil and gas. War is not a pre condition. Who attacks wind farms for fun anyway? It is clear that the attack is politically linked and economically motivated.