Cyber attacks on power grids - how they can happen

One often hears about the possibility of electricity grids being blacked out by cyber attacks but until coming across an article in the Financial Times (Oct 12) I was not sure how this might happen. 

An electricity grid, such as the UK’s National Grid or various regional grids in the USA, comprises a network of power stations connected by very high voltage cables. Houses, corporations and public service all depend on the electrical power distributed by the grid.

 The essence of a power station is

• A source of heat, be it the burning of fossil fuels (gas, oil or coal) or the splitting of atoms (nuclear).

• A boiler to provide super-heated steam.

• A turbine which rotates as the steam is fed into it.

• A generator comprising coils of copper wire in a magnetic field.

The rotational energy of the turbine causes the wires of the generator to be rotated through the magnetic field and this induces an electric current in them. It is this current which is fed into the grid.

So how is this system susceptible to cyber attacks? The answer appears to be in the turbine control unit which governs the speed of the turbine. If malicious data gets into this control unit the turbine blades can rotate too fast and be damaged or completely destroyed, which means no power. When these control units are part of an electronic network which is connected to the internet they are vulnerable to hackers hell bent on sabotage.

There are of course measures to counteract such attacks and many power stations are not connected to the internet, although even these could be affected by personnel with direct access to the turbine control units. The problem is that the security people are in a kind of arms race with the hackers, so that our domestic, corporate and public electricity supplies are dependent on the security programmers winning this race as well as on thorough vetting of power station staff by employers.

A recent survey indicated that 85% of the world’s utility networks have been infiltrated by criminals and spy agencies. In a way you could say this is encouraging because despite the infiltrations no serious widespread black outs have occurred but nevertheless I hope there is no relaxing of vigilance.

John

Author, 2077 AD

cosmik.jo@gmail.com

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There's probably no Dawkins

This coming week  William Lane Craig, an academic  based in the USA, is touring the UK to argue, on non-biblical grounds, for the existence of God.    (NB Click on the video).

It is a busy schedule but it seems that the standard debate format is not to the liking of  Richard Dawkins, who has refused an invitation to debate the question 'Is God a delusion?' at the SheldonianTheatre at Oxford University on Tuesday October 25. He has refused a number of  similar invitations without any sound reason that I am aware of. Not surprisingly this a source of some amusement and has led to the Oxford bus campaign in which 30 buses in the area display the words 'Probably there's no Dawkins - so stop worrying.' This is in response to a London bus campaign a couple of years ago pronouncing 'There's probably no God - so stop worrying.'

My understanding is that Polly Toynbee of the British Humanist Asscoiation,  initially agreed to step in but changed her mind. An empty chair will be supplied in case Dr Dawkins decides to turn up: otherwise it will be a lecture, not a debate, except that several leading atheists will be invited to interrogate Dr Craig, presumably as a panel. Prof A.C.Grayling also declined.

Dr Lane Craig is a prolific author of scholarly papers and 30 books on philosophical theology and cosmology. Previously he has debated with devout atheists such as A.C.Grayling, Christopher Hitchens and Laurence Krauss.

His tour starts on Monday 17 October at Westminster Hall in London where he will oppose Stephen Law.

Should be an interesting week.

John
Author, 2077 AD

America's space strategy

NASA has now committed itself to the development of a heavy-lifting rocket system able to deliver a hundred tons or so into orbit, using a rocket more powerful than the Saturn V which sent astronauts to the Moon in 1969 and the ear;y 1970s. The new system will allow heavy structures to be built in orbit and enable manned expeditions to asteroids to be launched. Later, interplanetary missions to Mars and other planets could be mounted from bases in orbit around the Earth.

Initially I was disappointed by this approach to space exploration. It seemed rather unimaginative, a mere upgrade the long abandoned ballistic-missile-type Apollo programme. In the long term what we need is a low-cost spaceplane able to take men into orbit and able to both take off from and land on an ordinary runway. See the post on the Skylon, a revolutionary concept being developed in the UK.

However, an article in Spaceflight (Nov 2011), a monthly journal of the British Interplanetary Society (which I belong to) has given me pause for thought.

One aspect of the low cost spaceplane approach is the frequency of flights, since this determines the cost per mission of launching one ton into orbit, and the flight frequency depends on the demand, which depends on the quantity and size of structures in orbit which need servicing. The heavy lifting ballistic rocket approach will allow a rapid growth in such orbital hardware and this will create a market for independently operated earth-to-orbit vehicles like the Skylon.

As the author, Mike Armitage, points out, transport on the surface of our planet is not restricted to just one type – it ranges from bicycles to jumbo jets. So it would seem likely that space exploration will become similarly diverse.

Nevertheless I am perplexed as to why the Skylon project is not getting much media attention. Maybe if Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic took an interest the journalists would flock to it.

  

John

Author, 2077 AD

cosmik.jo@gmail.com

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