A Con Edison power plant stands in a Brooklyn neighborhood across from Manhattan on March 15, 2018 in New York City. (AFP photo)
US intelligence officials say Russian hackers are shifting their focus on the country’s power grid rather than its electoral systems, a report says.
According to a New York Times report on Saturday, the hackers are “state-sponsored.”
Moscow has already dismissed allegations of meddling in the 2016 election, which yielded President Donald Trump.
Citing “intelligence officials and executives of the companies that oversee the world’s computer networks,” the American newspaper said the hackers have boosted efforts to implant malware in the electrical grid.
Earlier this week, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the Russian military intelligence agency had infiltrated the control rooms of power plants across the US.
The report follows allegations of Russian efforts to infiltrate the online accounts of two Senate Democrats up for re-election.
Trump, who is under investigation for alleged collusion with the Kremlin, “has made it clear that his administration will not tolerate foreign interference in our elections from any nation state to other malicious actors,” according to a White House statement.
Twelve Russian military officers were accused of American election interference earlier this month.
Ever since Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, the US intelligence community has overwhelmingly maintained that Moscow sought to meddle in the 2016 election.
Russia has denied meddling in the election as well as being in possession of any damaging information on the US president.
What we’ve learned is that the attack hasn’t just taken down personal computers, but core government and business networks affecting everything from health care systems and transportation in Europe, to ATM withdrawals in China.
It’s massive, to be sure. But in the grand scheme of things, up to this point, it has been a fairly minor inconvenience.
But as Joe Joseph warns in his latest news report at The Daily Sheeple, this is just the tip of the iceberg, because now that we’ve seen how quickly such an attack can spread, it’s only a matter of time before rogue groups or state-sponsored players make a direct attempt at taking down core systems that keep millions of people in America alive. As we’ve previously noted, U.S. cyber command has warned that power grids, physical infrastructure and commerce systems will be a major target of future cyber attacks, and the latest Ransomware attack utilizing NSA-created exploits proves just how serious the damage could be:
Experts are saying this is just the tip of the iceberg… what the NSA has done and the damage they have caused as the result of coming up with these exploits in the first place is criminal… but it’s beyond criminal… in our society we have become so dependent on technology.. our computers… our cell phone…
We’ve become so hooked on it that if something happens and it looks like it can very easily happen… where some of these hacks are exploited… we could see an instantaneous change in the way that we live… to the point where you could see upwards of 80% or 90% of the population just in the United States dying as a result of a prolonged power outage because the grid gets hacked…
Joseph’s figure of a 90% die off in the event of a grid failure is based on the work of EMP researcher Dr. Peter Pry, who recently testified before a Congressional panel on the dangers of “grid down” scenarios resulting from electro-magnetic pulse attack. Though Pry’s research is primarily based on the threat of a nuclear device being detonated a couple hundred miles above the central United States taking out the entirety of the domestic power grid, the end result of a grid-down scenario, whether initiated by a cyber attack or something else, is very much the same.
Without the grid, all life in America would come to a standstill. Gas station pumps wouldn’t work, which means trucks couldn’t deliver food to grocery stores. And even if your local store still had food on the shelves, cash registers and bank payment verification systems would be unavailable, making hard currency like gold and silver the only means of transacting. As we’ve seen in China over the weekend, ATM’s would likely be inaccessible. So, too, would be your access to clean water, as most utility plants are tied to the power grid.
3-5 days following a disaster is the bewitching hour. During this short amount of time, the population slowly becomes a powder keg full of angry, desperate citizens. A good example is the chaos that ensued in New Orleans following the absence of action from the local government or a timely effective federal response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In such troubled times, people were forced to fend for themselves and their families, by any means necessary. This timeline of Hurricane Katrina effectively illustrates “the breakdown,” and within three days, the citizens of New Orleans descended into anarchy, looting and murder.
If the crisis extends for any more than about a week, you can expect full-out war on the streets of America as people race to acquire the last remaining resources.
It may sound incredible, but if you consider the reality of our dependence on technology, a multi-week or multi-month hiccup in the system will be enough to bring the entire thing crashing down.
Even the Department of Homeland Security recently warned about the potential for devastating cyber attacks, going so far as to recommend that families need to prepare at least two weeks of food and emergency supplies because the federal government may be overwhelmed and unable to provide assistance.
The U.S. power grid appears to have been hit with multiple power outages affecting San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.
Officials report that business, traffic and day-to-day life has come to a standstill in San Francisco, reportedly the worst hit of the three major cities currently experiencing outages.
Power companies in all three regions have yet to elaborate on the cause, though a fire at a substation was the original reason given by San Francisco officials.
A series of subsequent power outages in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City left commuters stranded and traffic backed up on Friday morning. Although the outages occurred around the same time, there is as of yet no evidence that they were connected by anything more than coincidence.
The first outage occurred at around 7:20 a.m. in New York, when the power went down at the 7th Avenue and 53rd Street subway station, which sent a shockwave of significant delays out from the hub and into the rest of the subway system. By 11:30 a.m. the city’s MTA confirmed that generators were running again in the station, although the New York subways were set to run delayed into the afternoon.
Later in the morning, power outages were reported in Los Angeles International Airport, as well as in several other areas around the city.
The San Francisco Fire Department was responding to more than 100 calls for service in the Financial District and beyond, including 20 elevators with people stuck inside, but reported no immediate injuries. Everywhere, sirens blared as engines maneuvered along streets jammed with traffic.Traffic lights were out at scores of intersections, and cars were backing up on downtown streets as drivers grew frustrated and honked at each other.
The cause of the outage has not yet been made clear, though given the current geo-political climate it is not out of the question to suggest a cyber attack could be to blame. It has also been suggested that the current outages could be the result of a secretive nuclear/EMP drill by the federal government.
As we have previously reported, the entire national power grid has been mapped by adversaries of the United States and it is believed that sleep trojans or malware may exist within the computer systems that maintain the grid.
It isn’t just EMPs and natural disaster that poses a threat to the grid, but there is also the potential for attacks on individual power substations in the vast network of decentralized and largely unguarded power grid chain. A U.S. government study established that there would be “major, extended blackouts if more than three key substations were destroyed.”
Whether by criminals, looters, terrorists, gangs or pranksters, it would take very little to bring down the present system, and there is currently very little the system can do to protect against this wide open threat.
Whether the current outages are the result of a targeted infrastructure cyber attack or simply a coincidence, most Americans think the impossible can’t happen, as The Prepper’s Blueprint author Tess Pennington highlights, a grid-down scenario won’t just be a minor inconvenience if it goes on for more than a day or two:
Consider, for a moment, how drastically your life would change without the continuous flow of energy the grid delivers. While manageable during a short-term disaster, losing access to the following critical elements of our just-in-time society would wreak havoc on the system.
Challenges or shut downs of business commerce
Breakdown of our basic infrastructure: communications, mass transportation, supply chains
Inability to access money via atm machines
Payroll service interruptions
Interruptions in public facilities – schools, workplaces may close, and public gatherings.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
Tales from the Conspiratum 