18. January 2008 by admin.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hackers literally turned out the lights in multiple cities after breaking into electrical utilities and demanding extortion payments before disrupting the power, a senior CIA analyst told utility engineers at a trade conference.All the break-ins occurred outside the United States, said senior CIA analyst Tom Donahue. The U.S. government believes some of the hackers had inside knowledge to cause the outages. Donahue did not specify what countries were affected, when the outages occurred or how long the outages lasted. He said they happened in “several regions outside the United States.”

“In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities,” Donahue said in a statement. “We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet.”

A CIA spokesman Friday declined to provide additional details.

“The information that could be shared in a public setting was shared,” said spokesman George Little. “These comments were simply designed to highlight to the audience the challenges posed by potential cyber intrusions.”

Donahue spoke earlier this week at the Process Control Security Summit in New Orleans, a gathering of engineers and security managers for energy and water utilities.

The Bush administration is increasingly worried about the little-understood risks from hackers to the specialized electronic equipment that operates power, water and chemical plants.

In a test last year, the Homeland Security Department produced a video showing commands quietly triggered by simulated hackers having such a violent reaction that an enormous generator shudders as it flies apart and belches black-and-white smoke.

The recorded demonstration, called the “Aurora Generator Test,” was conducted in March by government researchers investigating a dangerous vulnerability in computers at U.S. utility companies known as supervisory control and data acquisition systems. The programming flaw was fixed, and equipment makers urged utilities to take protective measures.

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8. January 2008 by admin.

NAMPA, Idaho (AP) — A cat picked the wrong place to come in from the cold, and caused a power outage that blacked out more than 12,000 homes and businesses.

The cat entered an electrical substation, snuggled up to a warm transformer and contacted a live circuit, causing a short that blew out nine feeder lines Monday afternoon, Idaho Power officials said.

Service was restored in less than three hours to most customers, including City Hall where the lights came on in time for a City Council meeting, utility spokesman Dennis Lopez said.

The outage also disabled traffic lights in the city of about 77,000 people. Temporary stop signs were set up at affected intersections and about 15 police officers were assigned to direct and monitor traffic. Police Lt. Eric Skoglund said he didn’t know of any accidents that could be blamed on the outage.

The short circuit killed the cat.

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