bugtraq - Re: CNN: 'Explores Possibility that Power Outage is Related to Internet Worm'

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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0308152019350.19338-100000@mmd.ath.cx>
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 20:49:06 +0200 (CEST)
From: Virtual Master <vmaster@....ath.cx>
To: Geoff Shively <gshively@...x.com>
Subject: Re: CNN: 'Explores Possibility that Power Outage is Related to
 Internet Worm'

The german publishing house "heise", producing the magazines c't and ix,
got a news on their page mentioning a probable link between the worm and
the power outage.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/ju-15.08.03-001/

The article is in german, but I'm trying to translate the important pieces
to english:

The failing niagara power-plant belongs to National Grid USA. That
power-supplier is listed as a reference customer of Northern Dynamics.
Norhtern Dynamics labeled themselves as "Home of the OPC Experts" and
offer a range of products that use OPC for control and operation systems.

OPC stands for "Ole for process control" and is based on microsofts
COM/DCOM model. In a network affected by the W32.Blaster worm the
DCOM-communcation fails, and therefor OPC fails on unpatched systems.

OPC is employed among other things for the linking of so called SCADA
systems (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), as used by
power-plants.

The OPC experts from northern dynamics also list General Electrics,
Siemens AG, european power-plant constructor ABB and the european
organization for nuclear research as reference customers.

Best regards,

Dominic

On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Geoff Shively wrote:

> Just flipped on CNN, watching the masses snake through the streets of
> Manhattan as correspondents state that this could be an affect of the
> blaster worm.
>
> Interesting but I don't see how an worm of this magnitude (smaller than that
> of Slammer/Sapphire and others) could influence DCS and SCADA systems around
> the US, particularly just in the North East.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Geoff Shively, CHO
> PivX Solutions, LLC
>
> Are You Secure?
> http://www.pivx.com
>
>