Cyber security pundits and contractors can't seem to make it through a presentation without invoking the specter of hackers shutting down the US electric grid. That's certainly something to be concerned about, especially if we end up at war with a country like China, but at the moment, actual incidents are hard to come by. Indeed, serious electric grid vandalism remains comfortably old school—like climbing a 100-foot, high-voltage transmission tower and chopping through the cables with a saw, then removing a few bolts from the bottom of the metal tower, then attaching a half-inch thick cable to the tower with a 15-inch eyebolt, and then pulling the cable across the adjacent Union Pacific railroad track "in an apparent attempt to utilize a moving train to bring down the tower." You know, old school.
According to the FBI, this actually happened in Cabot, Arkansas, in the early morning on August 21. The vandalism closed state highway 321 for the entire day, and the FBI has offered a $20,000 reward for the arrest of a suspect.
That kind of heat might deter most suspects, though probably not the kind of person who would climb an electric transmission tower and cut a high voltage power line with a saw. And indeed, a similar act of vandalism was reported September 29 at an Entergy Arkansas substation down the road in Keo. An intentionally set fire consumed the substation control house but caused no power outages in the surrounding community. To make an already strange story that much odder, the arsonist left a message scrawled on the metal plate outside the substation: "You should have expected us."
The "expect us" tagline belongs to the hacker collective Anonymous, though "membership" in the group is so fluid and the phrase so well-known at this point that it's impossible to say if the attack actually had anything to do with the group.
Then this week in Jacksonville, Arkansas, someone climbed over a utility company fence to access a parked "Skytrim" tractor (see one in action) complete with circular saw blade on the end of its massive extendable arm. The stolen tractor, used for chopping down tree limbs, was driven through a large cattle gate, down two roads, and then off-road along the clear-cut right-of-way for high voltage transmission lines. The driver continued until he came to a pair of key utility poles, which he promptly cut down. 10,000 First Electric Cooperative customers lost power.
The FBI believes that the vandal has "above-average knowledge or skill in electrical matters." Tips can go to the FBI's Little Rock field office at (501) 221-9100 or Little.Rock@ic.fbi.gov. Watch the full FBI press conference here. And then remember that as "cyber" as our world has become, the offline world is still the place where the truly crazy stuff continues to happen.
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