[Infowarrior] - No Chinese Hackers Found in Florida Outage Either

[Richard Forno]

No Chinese Hackers Found in Florida Outage Either
By Kevin Poulsen EmailJune 10, 2008 | 2:51:56

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/no-chinese-hack.html

A recent report from the National Journal cited computer security  
executives and U.S. intelligence officials blaming Chinese government  
hackers for two major U.S. power outages. We already debunked the  
claim with respect to the massive 2003 northeast blackout.  Now the   
Florida Reliability Coordinating Council has released its preliminary  
report (.pdf) on the February 26th 2008 Florida outage, and -- no  
surprise -- human error, not cyber terrorism, is to blame.

     Although the initiating cause of the event is still under review  
by the Field Personnel Actions Review Team (FPART), a sub-team of the  
FEAT, the preliminary cause is currently linked to the disabling, by a  
relay field engineer, of all local protective relay equipment while  
troubleshooting an associated 138 kV switch. The FRCC Handbook  
requires that “each system operator shall notify the FRCC Security  
Coordinator when a protective relay or equipment failure that reduces  
system reliability occurs.” Although the FEAT has not come to any  
conclusions regarding this part of the analysis, the nature of this  
procedure and its importance warrants that it be reaffirmed by the  
FRCC OC to ensure that FRCC system operators and relay field personnel  
understand the intent and importance of the procedure when performing  
maintenance on FRCC bulk power system elements.

The organization has released six recommendations to prevent a  
recurrence of the fault. None of them include letting the NSA monitor  
all U.S. web traffic.