Is China Preparing an Attack on the U.S. Power Grid?

http://threatjournal.com/archive/tj05042013.html

 

Is China Preparing an Attack on the U.S. Power Grid?

May 1, 2013

What You Need to Know

It was revealed this week that U.S. intelligence agencies were recently made aware of repeated cyber intrusions into the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ National Inventory of Dams (NIDS) , a database containing sensitive information on vulnerabilities of every major dam in the United States. There are approximately 8,100 major dams across waterways in the United States. There are approximately 79,000 dams listed in the NIDS database. The compromise of the database is raising new concerns that China is preparing to conduct a future cyber attack against the national electrical power grid. In a report published this week, the hacking attacks began in January of this year and that all of the activity was traced back to China. WHY THE CONCERN? On 17 August 2009 at 8:13 AM, the Sayano–Shushenskaya hydro-electric plant on the Yenisei River, near Sayanogorsk in Khakassia, Russia suffered a catastrophic accident that caused flooding of the engine and turbine rooms. Two of the 711 MVA electric generators explode underwater as a result of a short circuit. Watch a video report about the accident here. The NIDS database categorizes U.S. dams by the number of people that would be killed if a dam fails. They include “significant” and “high” hazard levels. According to Michelle Van Cleave, the former National Counterintelligence Executive, the database compromise highlights the danger posed by hackers who are targeting critical U.S. infrastructure for future attacks. She says that “In the wrong hands, the Army Corps of Engineers’ database could be a cyber attack roadmap for a hostile state or terrorist group to disrupt power grids or target dams in this country,” Van Cleave said the intrusion appears to be part of an effort to collect “vulnerability and targeting data” for future cyber or military attacks. “Alarm bells should be going off because we have next to no national security emergency preparedness planning in place to deal with contingencies like that,” she said.

Department of Defense: N. Korea One of the Most Critical U.S. Security Challenges

May 2, 2013

What You Need to Know

North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities and development of long-range ballistic missile programs make it one of the most critical U.S. security challenges in Northeast Asia, according to the Defense Department’s first report to Congress on that nation’s military development. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered the report to Congress this week, According to the report (PDF), the Korean People’s Army -- an umbrella organization composed of ground, air, naval, missile and special operations forces -- ranks in personnel numbers as the fourth-largest military in the world. According to the report, the large, forward-deployed military can inflict great damage on South Korea despite serious resource shortfalls and aging hardware, but the strength of the U.S.-South Korean alliance deters North Korea from conducting attacks on its southern neighbor. North Korea’s continued pursuit of nuclear technology and capabilities and its development of long-range ballistic missile programs -- including the December 2012 Taepodong-2 missile launch and the April 2012 display of a new road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile -- demonstrate North Korea’s threat to regional stability and U.S. national security, the report observed.