Russian hackers targeted American energy grid

[Meanwhile + 49]

The Trump administration on Thursday accused Russian government hackers of carrying out a deliberate, ongoing operation to penetrate vital U.S. industries, including the energy grid — a major ratcheting up of tensions between the two countries over cybersecurity. 

The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI accused Russian hackers  of waging coordinated cyberattacks against the U.S. energy sector and other elements of critical infrastructure since at least March 2016.

Federal officials say that the Russian government conducted a “multi-stage intrusion campaign” that involved using malware and spearphishing attacks to compromise networks of small commercial facilities and gain remote access to U.S. energy sector networks.

[Stephen + 67]

very organized operation. But I wouldn't say hackers are the masterminds

ttps://safehaven.com/article/45022/Russian-Hackers-Target-US-Energy-Infrastructure

[Joanna + 68]

are we actually going to put any defensive measures in place this time?

[李伟王芳 + 77]

it is dumb how some US companies actually contract with Russia-based companies to help develop IT-related systems software that control US electric grid lines, port facilities and other vital power systems.

[damirUSBiH + 327]

So, dangerous and sick situation.The West is in it's darkest days. Someone has to stop Russia. They never abided by the chemical weapons ban, have continued to manufacture and have deployed such a weapon. They have excellent relationship and business trade with NK, China, Turkey...They are stronger than ally in Syria...What else? Now, they are coming in our home...

[franco + 96]

Not just U.S. or West. Russia has been honing their skills in Eastern Europe. Offensive cyber, propaganda, influence in many countries, spreads its ideologies...

[李伟王芳 + 77]

National security isn’t just about missiles and spies. It’s about maintaining the nation’s supremacy in key industries that are strategic for a number of reasons. This is one of them

https://safehaven.com/article/45086/Why-The-White-House-Killed-This-140-Billion-Tech-Deal

[Structural Master + 18]

 

On 3/16/2018 at 10:41 AM, 李伟王芳 said:

National security isn’t just about missiles and spies. It’s about maintaining the nation’s supremacy in key industries that are strategic for a number of reasons. This is one of them

https://safehaven.com/article/45086/Why-The-White-House-Killed-This-140-Billion-Tech-Deal

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Fake-News-of-Russian-Cyber-Attack-On-Vermont-Utility-Goes-Viral-Before-Trut

[Brianroy + 1]

China is the danger...not the Russians.  CHINA, thanks to Obama's foreign placed betrayal of us (or should we say natural foreign born citizenship allegiance, regardless where he was born), along with companies like Apple and Google who by Chinese law for a 0% tax rate, gave China their technology keys this year, while Google actually operates as a Chinese State's Internet Big Brother censoring speech and having the ability to revoke the right to have a job, a bank account, income, or to travel, based on how they grade your social media.  A power Google is levying to have here while breaking away from any loyalty to the USA, it seems to me.  And perhaps, like in India, you are to be given a number and if your number comes up, you are revoked from ownership in anything and lose true (de facto) citizenship status.  

During the years of  2002 - 2005, it was already known that 61% of the Utilities Computerized system problems were EXTERNALLY caused, presumably hackers as well as inclement weather which includes high winds and lightning strikes, and that number of externally caused incidents was increasing with each year.
http://cansecwest.com/slides06/csw06-byres.pdf

As technology grows, so does the off-site access to SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) because they are designing its control that way to save on labor as a means of excuse of increased efficiency.  Unfortunately, there is a higher associated cost of new technology transfer and repair, decreased direct access human oversight security that is relegated over to computer software being correctly programmed to sound off its bells and whistles alarms; and with this decreased oversight efficiency for computer high tech stream-lining people out of jobs, engaging in the known risk of enabling the ability of hackers to access SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) by mimicking a limited but now obtainable field of authorized active employee LAN logo-on accounts through too many potential and actual unsecured off-site access points into the system.

Even with the aftermath of 9/11/2001, and the changing political environment that began shifting to a new reliance and counter-hacking activity in the growing Internet technology boom, reports even in 2002, though written in regard to nation states pursuing cyber-warfare, were still yet to be foolishly downplayed in the tone of the language used  --
for example, a 2002 Center For Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report on page 2 states that:
"A preliminary review of these factors suggests that computer network vulnerabilities are an increasingly serious business problem but that their threat to national security is overstated."   http://www.steptoe.com/publications/231a.pdf
  --  so that someone who is not internally motivated on the subject, might not be externally motivated to put into action what he ought to be doing for our National Security.   However, in just 2 years, the mood had changed to one based more in reality as seen through a  2004 Dartmouth Institute For Security Technologies Report http://www.ists.dartmouth.edu/docs/cyberwarfare.pdf

In 2009, another major Northeast Coast power blackout occurred, this time allegedly from a bolt of lightning, http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-568422.html    which could just as well be recreated another way, with much the same results.

In 2011, we read of hackers shutting down the primary pumps at a water utilities plant here in the United States at a location just west of Springfield, Illinois on November 8 of that year:       http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/18/us-cybersecurity-attack-idUSTRE7AH2C320111118

Soon after, a hacker just trying to make a point on U.S. vulnerability, hacked the internal computers at a waste-water treatment facility in  "South Houston," Texas,   and was reported to have posted a scathing one page rebuke about utility computer vulnerabilities and to have also utilized screenshots which he posted to prove their point:       http://www.earthtimes.org/business/water-systems-hacked-illinois-texas/1644/

 

On July 6, 2012, there was an ineffective Big Brother overkill solution in which a preliminary (allegedly Continental United States) Internet kill-switch and black-out communications technologies and capabilities put into place.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/06/executive-order-assignment-national-security-and-emergency-preparedness-

http://www.infowars.com/rights-group-sues-big-sis-over-internet-kill-switch/

As I understand it, the kill switch does NOT prevent secure line transfers and top secret or confidential clearance level hacking, or those hackers already within the US Government or Government Clearance employees at Google  (who are supposed to be US Geospatial Intel over- sighted, but often let their censorship and anti-Constitutional where others are concerned proclivities run rogue anyway) from doing their thing to access and sabotage on a national level perhaps even MORE easily.  It's like when Contingency of Government activates, so do the 555 prefix numbers to military commands and operational controls.  It becomes MORE readily available to those who know, while to the rest, the land lines and such are supposed to block and lock.  

In February 2013,  the citizens of the United States were nationally made aware that  the Chinese Government has most of  an entire building that its Government operates as a hacking base in Shanghai.  

In the China Daily News, some 6 months after the event, they too did a story and had watched the video of the United States "Aurora Generator Test".  Of interest is a quote near the end of the China Daily News article of a Security Expert who states: 

"What keeps your lights on are some very, very old technology," said Joe Weiss, a security expert who has testified before Congress about such threats. "If you can get access to these systems, you can conceptually cause them to do whatever it is you want them to do."
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2007-09/27/content_6139437.htm
 

Obama and those Communist minded with him shared the electro-magnetic vulnerabilities of the United States first with Russian military troops on U.S. soil (in Colorado)  in 2012, and then with Chinese Army Troops on U.S. soil (in Hawaii)  in November 2013
http://planet.infowars.com/worldnews/usnews/gridex-ii-news-media-quiet-ahead-of-november-13-14-national-power-grid-emergency-drills

 by inviting the foreign adversarial or enemy forces of the Chinese Army to observe first-hand a top secret operation of a simulated nuclear explosion designed to destroy the U.S. Utility and Communications grids over the Continental U.S.,  even though the Chinese Army have specifically and PUBLICLY gone on record in the past several years that they wish to soon use this very tactic to destroy the United States by an inferred cyberwarfare hack sneak attack upon us.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/30/inside-the-ring-us-grid-threatened/#pagebreak

Before being Internet scrubbed, for a couple years, Western Journalism reported:

"The Communist People’s Republic of China  was invited take part in a massive drill dubbed GridExII that took  place on November 12-14, 2013. The drill simulated the detonation of a  massive nuclear warhead high above the skies of the United  States, creating a giant EMP—Electro Magnetic Pulse—that took out the U.S. electrical grid,communications,banking  services,and all computers,simulating a helpless America completely  dependent on its all-wise government.
According to declassified (but heavily redacted) intelligence documents released in 2011,the Chinese were reportedly working on a “Super Electromagnet Pulse Bomb.”

China  is gearing up for war against the United States,and their top weapon is  a super electromagnetic pulse bomb that can blanket the U.S. and send  America back to the Dark Ages in less than one second.

And no doubt the Chinese have perfected this EMP bomb by now.
So  exactly why the Chinese are involved in a drill of this nature is  unclear. The only logical explanation,as crazy as it sounds,is that the  Department of Homeland Security—Obama’s “Civilian National Security  Force” (the entity overseeing this drill)—is secretly working with the  Communist Chinese government!
Which is not surprising,given that Barack Hussein Obama has long been suspected of being an ardent Marxist."   [Unquote]

The exercise in which the Chinese participated was preceded by another exercise 2 months earlier in September 2013, in which a search and rescue mission simulation was conducted by U.S. Advisers aboard a Chinese Missile destroyer. 

The Obama Administration, like Apple and Google, gave away the hacking keys to China, and by Manchurian Compact that China shares with Russia, along with top nuclear technologies we unilaterally handed over to Russia as part of Obama's START Treaty language, put us all in the cross-hairs for a total hacking annihilation without the need for China or Russia to launch a single nuke at us to win a next war.  The only effective way of preventing outside hacking, it seems, is that all Internet linked systems must be off line to outside sources, much like how traffic control works at an airport, and be totally in house for command and control.  A separate system can be built for Internet communication, but there needs to be human elements that entirely separate and prevent the two from interconnection.  This is especially true now that China, which has vowed to destroy the USA by a next war by means of hacking warfare, is now on the verge of giving that order, and could very well shut this nation completely down by means of such a maneuver, and within days to weeks leave this nation entirely vulnerable  to a full nuclear strike with a minimal retaliation response.  Is that why so many of the elite are skipping the nation in the last couple weeks and "checking out" their relocation bunkers from Canada to New Zealand?  Perhaps it is a coincidence, or perhaps they are tricking the POTUS into confrontation instead of cunning negotiation on behalf of us all.  

Suffice it to say, if you fear hacking, look first to CHINA.  Economically and technologically, THEY are now the second world Super-power in the realm of State run and State sponsored hacking abilities.  Not Russia.  

Edited March 26, 2018 by Brianroy
Quotation clarity