Chinese Hackers Behind Massive Northeast Blackout?

One prominent expert told National Journal he believes that China’s People’s Liberation Army played a role in the power outages. Tim Bennett, the former president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a leading trade group, said that U.S. intelligence officials have told him that the PLA in 2003 gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern United States. The intelligence officials said that forensic analysis had confirmed the source, Bennett said. “They said that, with confidence, it had been traced back to the PLA.” These officials believe that the intrusion may have precipitated the largest blackout in North American history, which occurred in August of that year. A 9,300-square-mile area, touching Michigan, Ohio, New York, and parts of Canada, lost power; an estimated 50 million people were affected.

Officially, the blackout was attributed to a variety of factors, none of which involved foreign intervention. Investigators blamed “overgrown trees” that came into contact with strained high-voltage lines near facilities in Ohio owned by FirstEnergy Corp. More than 100 power plants were shut down during the cascading failure. A computer virus, then in wide circulation, disrupted the communications lines that utility companies use to manage the power grid, and this exacerbated the problem. The blackout prompted President Bush to address the nation the day it happened. Power was mostly restored within 24 hours.

There has never been an official U.S. government assertion of Chinese involvement in the outage, but intelligence and other government officials contacted for this story did not explicitly rule out a Chinese role. One security analyst in the private sector with close ties to the intelligence community said that some senior intelligence officials believe that China played a role in the 2003 blackout that is still not fully understood.

I'm skeptical of the fact that such links were not explored fully, and if that evidence indeed linked Chinese hackers, especially those working for the Chinese government, to the blackout, that the US government would not have taken a position on the matter through various means at their discretion. Such acts could be construed as acts of war since they were an attack on vital infrastructure and affected the national economy and directly and indirectly harmed more than 50 million people.

At the same time, it could be understandable that the power companies wouldn't want to let it be known that their systems were hacked and vulnerable to manipulation in a way that could cause a cascading failure.

The report also claims that the blackout in Florida this year was the result of a Chinese PLA hacker.

This isn't the first time that security companies have warned of hack attacks against energy infrastructure.