I BET that this whole Blackout was due to the Blaster Worm!! Really

[thatsright]

No, I'm not one of those persistant paranoid conspiracists, but I'm willing to bet a few $$ that this whole blackout is all due to the Blaster Worm.

I'm stunned all the while watching from the chilly comfort of my A/C home here in Boston, that no newscaster has yet to even mention this possibility?? Boy I really feel bad for the folks in NYC, being trapped on a Subway sure blows.

One funny thing that this reminds me about, is a few weeks ago, is that while doing a full backup of my rig I thought to myself 'boy it would really blow if we lost the power.' Sure enough, 30 seconds after that thought, we did as I jinxed my self.

Well that's my $0.02 Feel free to take a penny, leave a penny.

 

[chin311]

/takes penny

 

[beer]

Do you realize how awful it would be if power management systems ran Windows?

'ahhhhhhh fvck here's another BSOD.......'

By the way, I'd like to add that you are a complete idiot if you think a Win NT4/2K/XP glitch for desktop PCs had anything to do with power routing.

That's like blaming CodeRed for a stock market crash/

 

[LordJezo]

I think you're dumb. Really

And feel bad for me too.. power outage had me almost not be able to get sushi last night.

 

[Daniel]

Did you hear Mikey died of pop rocks?

 

[yllus]

You're an idiot. The effects of that particular worm are well-known and don't even issue denial of service attacks anywhere other than at the Windows Update website.

It's possible a mutation of the MS.Blast virus was responsible, but I really doubt power grid systems A) run on run-of-the-mill PCs and B) are connected to the Intarweb while running MS Windows 2000 or XP.

 

[thatsright]

Well if the Lord himself says so, them it MUST be true.

But seriously, lord. Why do you say that. Do you just think the actual idea is not even a possibility, or what I wrote above was just idiotic?

 

[Spac3d]

I think it is Skynet. This is only the beggining!:Q

 

[Angrymarshmello]

That's just the stupidest idea I've ever heard.

 

[Pepsi90919]

but I really doubt power grid systems A) run on run-of-the-mill PCs and B) are connected to the Intarweb while running MS Windows 2000 or XP.

canadian niagara power was running state of the art dell servers all with NT 4 and some pretty neato software to control gates and switches remotely when i took a tour in '98. apparently they've kept with the times and i'm told they're running 2000 now on workstations.

 

[Jeff7]

Yeah, like, one or more of some power company's NT PC's hasn't been patched in years (Service packs? What are they??) and was rebooted.

 

[LordJezo]

Originally posted by: thatsright
Well if the Lord himself says so, them it MUST be true.

But seriously, lord. Why do you say that. Do you just think the actual idea is not even a possibility, or what I wrote above was just idiotic?

Maybe the part about the worm only going after MS sites and maybe the thing about Niagara Falls power plant going down and just bringing everything else with it due to a casscade of other plants on the grid trying to make up for the loss.

 

[Wheatmaster]

heh if the power was running on macs, we would have no problems

 

[beer]

Yea, where is Ameesh when he's actually useful.....

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: Mak0602
heh if the power was running on macs, we would have no problems

If it was on Linux we'd be experiencing blackouts every day for a few hours at a time.

 

[crisp82]

I think it is Skynet. This is only the beggining!

beat me to it dammit. guess I'll be seeing u @ Krystal Peaks too then

 

[thatsright]

Ok, I'll admit even what I said doesn't make any sense to me either.

But I stand by what I said. My gut keeps on telling me its the worm. I watched all of the morning news shows and no one can say why the Niagara station went down. It wasn't a lightning strike or terrorism. I still have my money on the worm.

 

[waylman]

Originally posted by: thatsright
No, I'm not one of those persistant paranoid conspiracists, but I'm willing to bet a few $$ that this whole blackout is all due to the Blaster Worm.

I'll take some of that action you dipsh!t.

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: thatsright
Ok, I'll admit even what I said doesn't make any sense to me either.

But I stand by what I said. My gut keeps on telling me its the worm. I watched all of the morning news shows and no one can say why the Niagara station went down. It wasn't a lightning strike or terrorism. I still have my money on the worm.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

 

[beer]

Originally posted by: thatsright
Ok, I'll admit even what I said doesn't make any sense to me either.

But I stand by what I said. My gut keeps on telling me its the worm. I watched all of the morning news shows and no one can say why the Niagara station went down. It wasn't a lightning strike or terrorism. I still have my money on the worm.

Do you really think that a Niagra Falls power system is plugged into the Internet in the first place? And without a firewall?

You are such a fvcking moron.

 

[Spoooon]

Geez, why is everyone being so antagonistic? It's not like he's making fun of your mom or anything.

 

[dmurray14]

Originally posted by: Elemental007

Originally posted by: thatsright
Ok, I'll admit even what I said doesn't make any sense to me either.

But I stand by what I said. My gut keeps on telling me its the worm. I watched all of the morning news shows and no one can say why the Niagara station went down. It wasn't a lightning strike or terrorism. I still have my money on the worm.

Do you really think that a Niagra Falls power system is plugged into the Internet in the first place? And without a firewall?

You are such a fvcking moron.

I'm not saying I really think the Blaster worm did this, but your network doesn't necessarily need to be connected to the internet to get the blaster worm. For instance, I could have a fairly big business network that isn't even connected to the internet, or is behind a firewall. As soon as one of my employees goes on a business trip and plugs in his laptop to the hotel internet connection, chances are he will get in worm in a fairly short amount of time. Then, he brings his laptop back to the company's HQ and plugs in to their network, and bam - they have the worm. Something like this could have happened, although I think - I HOPE they're not running a crucial power grid off a Microsoft system.

Dan out

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: Spoooon
Geez, why is everyone being so antagonistic? It's not like he's making fun of your mom or anything.

 

[DurocShark]

Niagra station went down cuz some 1D10T climbed up on one of the towers to take a better picture of the falls... but then fell across a coupla wires.

Toasty Tourist!

LoL... j/k

 

[beer]

Originally posted by: dmurray14

Originally posted by: Elemental007

Originally posted by: thatsright
Ok, I'll admit even what I said doesn't make any sense to me either.

But I stand by what I said. My gut keeps on telling me its the worm. I watched all of the morning news shows and no one can say why the Niagara station went down. It wasn't a lightning strike or terrorism. I still have my money on the worm.

Do you really think that a Niagra Falls power system is plugged into the Internet in the first place? And without a firewall?

You are such a fvcking moron.

I'm not saying I really think the Blaster worm did this, but your network doesn't necessarily need to be connected to the internet to get the blaster worm. For instance, I could have a fairly big business network that isn't even connected to the internet, or is behind a firewall. As soon as one of my employees goes on a business trip and plugs in his laptop to the hotel internet connection, chances are he will get in worm in a fairly short amount of time. Then, he brings his laptop back to the company's HQ and plugs in to their network, and bam - they have the worm. Something like this could have happened, although I think - I HOPE they're not running a crucial power grid off a Microsoft system.

Dan out

In this post, you are assuming several things to be true that may not necessarily be with a proprietary system like power routing that you don't even think about when it comes to Windows networks.

#1) obviously, they have to be running MS software that must have been unpatched and exposed even though it is a critical network;
#2) They must be running TCP/IP. Remember TCP/IP has only been in common use for about the last ten years now. Given the nature of the power systems and what I've learned in my one EE power systems class, the systems that route are basically coded at the logic level, it's not done in a high-level language and making API calls to a complex protocol like TCP/IP has too much overhead.
#3) Even if the main grid was running TCP/IP and unpatched Windows, why would the power system routing grid even be connected via a router to any PC network? Do you think they have a nice HTTP interface to play with the routing or something? Obviously under no circumstances would they even be subneted together, so you have to assume that someone knowingly created routing tables between PCs and some sort of network that controls the power grid. Seems odd and uncessary.