Message-ID: <497BC68FEF2B4D4B93C27539FD5155E9026B06@HBRG-EXCHANGE.anteon.com>
From: MRMyers at anteon.com (Myers, Marvin)
Subject: The Grid, Blaster v. Poor Security Engineering

There is always the possibility that there was a domino effect, tripping one breaker, then another, then another. Possible, but not likely. I am not a conspiracy theorist, nor do I believe that the blaster was solely to blame. I believe that a whole lot of unlikely circumstances fell into place at the exact same time, and then human error took over. Some people did there jobs, a lot more didn't. Some systems performed exactly as planned, a lot more did not. Did the blaster come into play at all, maybe, maybe not. I just believe that there are a lot more things that are known and could be made public to quell the fears and rumors. The longer they wait, the less people will believe the final explanation.
 

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Darren Reed [mailto:avalon@...igula.anu.edu.au] 
	Sent: Sat 8/16/2003 2:37 AM 
	To: Myers, Marvin 
	Cc: cta@...in.net; full-disclosure@...ts.netsys.com 
	Subject: Re: [Full-Disclosure] The Grid, Blaster v. Poor Security Engineering
	
	

	In some mail from Myers, Marvin, sie said:
	>
	> Not only is it ridiculous, it goes against everything that the power
	> companies have been telling us for years. If anyone has ever stood
	> outside during a thunderstorm and watched lightening bounce back and
	> forth across wires and transformers, then they will know that this is
	> bull. A single lightening strike while being able to cause significant
	> damage has never been proven able to bring down such a large portion of
	> the grid in the past. And if this were the case, they would be showing
	> the damage as soon as possible to quell and or stop the conspiracy and
	> doomsday theorists in their tracks.
	[...]
	
	In 1965, I think it was, it was a single circuit breaker that
	caused the entire NE grid to fail.  It didn't get damaged, it
	just tripped and that then caused others to trip - like dominos.
	I don't recall if it was faulty, but if you wanted to show what
	happened on tv, there would have been nothing to show.  I don't
	even think it was a lightning strike, the load for a particular
	line just became too much, so that breaker tripped, putting all
	its load onto another line that then tripped because it had too
	much and....so on.  The original breaker that tripped did exactly
	what it had been designed and built to do.  It's just that the
	consequences of that were not fully and properly understood and
	if this past week's events are any indication, it would appear
	that 38 years later, the same lesson(s) need to be relearnt.
	
	Whilst it takes less than a minute for power to go out everywhere,
	it takes much longer to restore it, as, for example, you have
	large generators that need to be restarted only when there is a
	load there to take the power they generate.
	
	The problem is in building the grid to deal with redundancy,
	it doesn't properly isolate failures that cause further problems
	(overload.)
	
	Want to find a root cause?  Probably one too many air conditioners
	being turned on to deal with the heat.
	
	Darren
	_______________________________________________
	Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
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