AUGUST 14th BLACKOUT INVESTIGATION UPDATE

An analysis of hundreds of pages of telephone transcripts and interviews has revealed that two grid operators and two utilities had failures of critical systems due to significant computer malfunctions that prevented them from getting real-time data in the hours before last month's massive blackout.

The peculiar coincidence raises questions about how such similar misfortune struck separate entities on the same hot day, a day that left parts of eight states and Ontario without power.

"It certainly sounds suspicious," said California cyber-security expert Fred Cohen, a consultant to the U.S. government on national security issues and the inventor of the first computer virus. . . [and]. . .

The blackout hit the same week that the viruslike worm Blaster crippled an estimated 700,000 computers worldwide, noted Steve Sundermeier, vice president of Central Command Inc., a Medina-based anti-virus firm.

Blaster attacked Microsoft operating systems. Utilities' control centers largely rely on Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems, known as SCADA networks, which typically run on Microsoft Windows.

The idea that a computer virus was at least partially responsible for the blackout was suggested by Bigwig and mentioned in a previous post of mine.

Read the rest of the story here.