FWD: CNN: 'Explores Possibility that Power Outage is Related to Internet Worm'

From: Alfio Puglisi (puglisi@arcetri.astro.it)
Date: Sun Aug 17 2003 - 06:58:33 MDT

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    I'm forwarding this without permission, from the Bugtraq security list,
    because I think it's highly interesting. Original email addresses
    obscured.

    Ciao,
    Alfio

    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 20:49:06 +0200 (CEST)
    From: Virtual Master <>
    To: Geoff Shively <>
    Subject: Re: CNN: 'Explores Possibility that Power Outage is Related to
        Internet Worm'

    The german publishing house "heise", producing the magazines c't and ix,
    got a news on their page mentioning a probable link between the worm and
    the power outage.

    http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/ju-15.08.03-001/

    The article is in german, but I'm trying to translate the important pieces
    to english:

    The failing niagara power-plant belongs to National Grid USA. That
    power-supplier is listed as a reference customer of Northern Dynamics.
    Norhtern Dynamics labeled themselves as "Home of the OPC Experts" and
    offer a range of products that use OPC for control and operation systems.

    OPC stands for "Ole for process control" and is based on microsofts
    COM/DCOM model. In a network affected by the W32.Blaster worm the
    DCOM-communcation fails, and therefor OPC fails on unpatched systems.

    OPC is employed among other things for the linking of so called SCADA
    systems (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), as used by
    power-plants.

    The OPC experts from northern dynamics also list General Electrics,
    Siemens AG, european power-plant constructor ABB and the european
    organization for nuclear research as reference customers.

    Best regards,

    Dominic



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