4 ms·

I think it probably doesn't take an electrical engineer to figure out that destroying the radiators would put the substation out of action at least temporarily,

I think it probably doesn't take an electrical engineer to figure out that destroying the radiators would put the substation out of action at least temporarily, but it does show they put a bit of thought into it at least. It doesn't seem like a case of a dumbass using the substation for target practice on a whim, it all seems very deliberate and purposeful.

anigbrowl 4y ago
While we don't know, for now, the level of deliberation and knowledge is congruent with various instructional materials that circulate in darker corners of the net (I don't want to name specific publications/sources). You can find pretty detailed advice and discourse about how to plan and execute an attack on the infrastructure unit, ie the substation. Information about the larger structure of the grid, transmission direction, system redundancies/tolerances, failure cascades is a lot harder to come by. You could build up a picture by accumulating OSINT resources, mapping gaps, making physical observations etc., but synthesizing that into any sort of working model of the grid itself would require some pretty advanced engineering expertise and a lot of institutional knowledge even at the local level. Anyone with sufficient smarts, training, and know-how is a lot more likely to be invested in the integrity of the grid than its sabotage. Also, in purely economic terms it's not efficient for an antagonist to max out resources on trying to land a decisive masterstroke. It takes a lot of time, money, and moving parts to pull off such an attack. An ongoing rash of cheap micro-attacks, even poorly correlated, drives up costs in ratchet fashion, without any threat being sufficiently expensive to bring about massive change (eg burying major parts of the transmission infrastructure, switching to a different architecture, radically different security posture). The strategic goal is to raise the cost of 'normal' above the market's willingness to bear, and then exploit social/political failure modes.
baybal2 4y ago
It's not the radiators, it's the transformator itself. Shorted winding == complete replacement needed for high voltages, and a single bullet would be more than enought to break insulation on the winding many times.
- deleted 4y ago
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chasil 4y ago
The damage could have been much more difficult to repair. "If the windings within the transformer itself were damaged, it would probably require replacement of the equipment. Transformers of this scale are rarely manufactured without an order, which means we don’t have a lot of spares sitting around, and the lead time can be months or years to get a new one delivered, let alone installed."

anigbrowl 4y ago

While we don't know, for now, the level of deliberation and knowledge is congruent with various instructional materials that circulate in darker corners of the net (I don't want to name specific publications/sources). You can find pretty detailed advice and discourse about how to plan and execute an attack on the infrastructure unit, ie the substation. Information about the larger structure of the grid, transmission direction, system redundancies/tolerances, failure cascades is a lot harder to come by. You could build up a picture by accumulating OSINT resources, mapping gaps, making physical observations etc., but synthesizing that into any sort of working model of the grid itself would require some pretty advanced engineering expertise and a lot of institutional knowledge even at the local level. Anyone with sufficient smarts, training, and know-how is a lot more likely to be invested in the integrity of the grid than its sabotage. Also, in purely economic terms it's not efficient for an antagonist to max out resources on trying to land a decisive masterstroke. It takes a lot of time, money, and moving parts to pull off such an attack. An ongoing rash of cheap micro-attacks, even poorly correlated, drives up costs in ratchet fashion, without any threat being sufficiently expensive to bring about massive change (eg burying major parts of the transmission infrastructure, switching to a different architecture, radically different security posture). The strategic goal is to raise the cost of 'normal' above the market's willingness to bear, and then exploit social/political failure modes.

baybal2 4y ago

It's not the radiators, it's the transformator itself. Shorted winding == complete replacement needed for high voltages, and a single bullet would be more than enought to break insulation on the winding many times.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

chasil 4y ago

The damage could have been much more difficult to repair. "If the windings within the transformer itself were damaged, it would probably require replacement of the equipment. Transformers of this scale are rarely manufactured without an order, which means we don’t have a lot of spares sitting around, and the lead time can be months or years to get a new one delivered, let alone installed."