On that special day, Sugien, (
[email protected]) said...
What with all the pc rebooting continually I guess all that extra
power draw could explain the blackout. Although I posted this as a Tongue
'N Cheek, I guess it could be possible; because if you think of what could
be hundreds of thousands of computers all shutting down and restarting at
the same time. With as many computers that were effected odds are that
quite a number of them could have all been starting up at the same time.
Those same computers most likely were left on most all the time and it could
be that with all of them rebooting at about the same time could quite
possible be the reason for the blackout. I think I read some where that the
power grid people take into account on Mondays the amount of equipment
coming online in the business world; but they would not have thought about
it occurring when it did. If you think about the area that it hit and the
approximate number of pc's in that area that most likely were hit with
blaster and were shutting down and rebooting, I guess it could likely be at
the very least a part of the answer.
The Heise Verlag (a PC mag syndicate located in Germany) has another
idea about a connection between MSblast and the power failure. It is
complete speculation by now, but nevertheless an interesting thought.
(I already posted this excerpt in alt.games.diablo2, where it was
completely OT :-?)
<quote>
"Um solche Ausfälle zu vermeiden, werden landesweit die Anschlüsse der
Kraftwerke an das Stromnetz über ein zentrales Grid-Center gesteuert.
Dies sorgt normalerweise auch dafür, dass notfalls Versorgungsgebiete
schnell vom Netz abgekoppelt werden, um die anderen Kraftwerke nicht
ebenfalls in den Abgrund zu ziehen. An dieser Stelle versagten die
Schutzfunktionen. In der Folge erhöhte sich die Netzlast für andere
Kraftwerke, die sich dann zum Schutz vor Überlastung ihrerseits vom Netz
abkoppelten und damit einige Landesteile der USA nicht mehr versorgen
konnten. Warum die Maßnahmen zur Vermeidung solcher Totalausfälle nicht
gegriffen haben, ist noch unklar."
To avoid such failures, the overland connections of the power plants to
the Grid are steered by a main grid centre. In normal cases it takes
care to unlink joint areas, if necessary, from the Grid in time, to
avoid dragging other power plants into the drain. At this point the
protection measures did fail. As a result the demand of power grew on
other power plants, which in order to protect themselves had to unlink
from the grid and consequently were unable to cater for several parts of
the USA. It is unclear, why the measures to prevent such massive
failures didn't work.
"Bei unseren Recherchen sind wir auf folgende Zusammenhänge gestoßen:
Das ausgefallene Niagara-Kraftwerk gehört zu National Grid USA. Dieser
Energieversorger wird als Referenzkunde von Northern Dynamics
aufgeführt. Diese Firma bezeichnet sich als "Home of the OPC Experts"
und bietet eine Reihe von Produkten an, die OPC zur Kommunikation mit
Kontroll- und Steuerungssystemen nutzen."
While investigating, we found the following relationship: The failed
Niagara plant is listed as a reference customer of Northern Dynamics
http://www.opcexperts.com/. This company calls itself "Home of the OPC
Experts" and offers a series of products, that use OPC for communicating
with control and steering systems.
"OPC steht für "OLE for Process Control" und setzt auf Microsofts
COM/DCOM-Modell auf. Das ist aber genau die Technik mit dem
Sicherheitsloch, das der Wurm W32.Blaster ausnutzt. In einem Netz, in
dem dieser Wurm aktiv ist, versagt infolge der regelmäßigen Neustarts,
die jetzt auch betroffene Endanwender bei ihren PCs beobachten, die
DCOM-Kommunikation und damit auch OPC auf ungepatchten Systemen."
OPC stands for "OLE for Process Control" and is based on Microsoft's
COM/DCOM model. This is exactly the technology with that security hole
which is exploited by the MSblast worm. Within a net in which this worm
is active, as a result of the constant reboots, that are seen by end
users on their home PC's, too, the DCOM communication and thus OPC as
well will fail on unpatched systems.
OPC wird unter anderem auch für die Kopplung sogenannter SCADA-Systeme
(Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) eingesetzt, wie sie auch
Kraftwerke benutzen. Dabei werden Prozessdaten zwischen einer Zentrale
(MTU) und einer oder mehreren Messeinheiten (RTU) ausgetauscht. Auch
Sollwerte für Prozesse lassen sich über SCADA-Systeme einstellen."
OPC also is implemented for the linking of so called SCADA systems
(Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), as they are used by power
plants. With this method there are process data exchanged between a main
unit (MTU) and one or serveral measuring units (RTU). Even standard or
default values are set via SCADA systems".
</quote>
Now connect this to the news that some ISPs are said to have turned to
blocking port 135 queries in order to restrict the bandwidth use of
MSblast, which as a result might have intercepted the SCADA messaging,
too, and you open another HUGE can of worms^Wrumours...
Gabriele Neukam
(e-mail address removed)
ino-Soft Software::::::::::::>