Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • August 18, 2020 12:12 PM

@ Bruce,

I’m not sure the attack is practical, but it’s an interesting idea.

Just a few weeks ago I would have agreed with you. Then a teenager got into a social network and sent out a “two bitcons for one” series of messages from various famous peoples accounts. And low and behold a few people did indeed fall for it.

Thus proving the old saying “you can fool some of the people some of the time”, but the tail end of the saying is “But not all of the people all of the time”.

Thus I suspect it will only work with a few people once or possibly twice if set up correctly.

The real problem though is not the total number of people that fall for such a trick, but the number on a vulnerable section.

A couple of decades back, a small lightning strike in South London caused a small substation to cut out which was not as such a problem. What was a problem was the “in rush” or “cold current” where devices at start up draw ten times or so their normal operating current. Thus trying to bring the substation back up caused a “cascade failure” and it’s this triggered by the in rush current thst does the damage, if proper maintainance has not been carried out.

Which brings us to the US where way to many power cables are “over head” thus vulnerable to all sorts of things like growing trees. As California found out their local supplier put profit over basic maintainance, such as cutting back natural growth. The result was fires that caused property damage to others followed shortly by legal action that the company lost and in effect went bankrupt. So rather than spend the money on proper maintainance they instead cut power every time the wind got above a breeze… Unfortunately the company was very very bad at letting people know what they were upto thus people used social media to warn others.

Thus the good citizens of Northern California are kind of set up to respond to social media, and if the story is spun right then it probably will work, especially if the attackers can also “trigger a substation to shut down” (apparently semi-auto fire into remote / isolated transformers will work).

Thus the trick as any successful con artist will tell you is not just “the tale” but most importantly “the way you tell it”…

Clive Robinson • August 20, 2020 3:54 AM

@ Ismar,

Solution- just make the power grid more robust or admit it cannot be done so that users can look for alternative solutions like local , power-grid-independent energy generation.

Neither will be allowed in the US. “because profit”.

The various grid operators business models assume “captive consumers” thus the consumer is not given any freedom of choice not even “Hobson’s Choice” of “take it or leave it”.

If consumers had choice like “local generation” then the monipolistic models would fail and fail badly in the face of competition.

Thus the lobbyists fight tooth and nail to stop anything other than a de facto monopolistic system with high “taxation” via “standing charges” and “punitive low usage charges”.

When you realise that their business model is not to supply the utility but “get money for nothing” by such methods you start to understand what goes on.

And this applies to nearly all utility / grid suppliers of household gas, electricity, water, phone lines, cable and internet connections.

Where people have set up “community service, by the community for the community” these monopolistic grid operators have been exceptionaly active to get such things made illegal in some way. Because by and large community efforts almost always provide better service at lower cost.

The only way the grid operators can stay in business without lobbying is by not operating any kind of grid… The reason for this is the important facts that most economists try to hide in their models,

1, Distance is Inefficient.
2, Distance is Fragile.
3, Distance is Dependent on others.

Thus “Distance Costs”[1] a lot, way more than “local” and it’s this cost that alows new market entrants to get over the likes of “startup costs” and be competative locally. The “Distantce Cost” can never be overcome by “economies of scale”, nor by “increased productivity” or all the other nonsense you hear spouted.

It’s one of the reasons the US burns so much coal, the power providers who do work in competition with each other to supply the grid distributors have marginal profit at best thus any new infrastructure they build has pay back times in the half century or more times and often they will run such plant beyond the point of effective maintainance.

Back when they used to give “free low energy light bulbs” these were not realy free. They had got to the point where they could build neither new generating plant or put in new grid, thus the only option they had was to reduce demand from customers. Likewise free home insulation is another way to reduce demand from customers.

The problem for the grid operators and providers, is if you reduce supply then profits fall, as the stock market expects them to increase profit above either bank rates or inflation then other ways have to be found to make profit. As we know the Enron method did not work out very well, so “creative accounting”, “debt restructuring” etc does not work. Nore does “taking over smaller competitors” unless you can use it to form a monopoly such that you can apply blanket taxation, or put yourself in a “too big to fail” position thus demand money from the direct social taxation system of local and central government.

[1] If you ask any military commander no matter how lowly in the chain of command, they are more than aware of “Distance Costs” as it’s the major way that battles and wars are lost. They have it drummed into them from early on that “long supply lines are extreamly vulnerable and have high equipment and manpower requirments”. During WWII with Romel and his tanks in North Africa, it was not Montgomery’s army that killed Romel’s Africa Corp, they mearly put it out of it’s missery with a coup de grass. What ailed the Africa Corp was long supply lines where it took six gallons of fuel to put one gallon of fuel in a tank. Likewise water, food, amunition, spare parts. Thus the Africa Corp were killed by the Navy and Air Force that sunk Romel’s supply lines as Churchill amongs others were reading Romel’s shopping lists via Enigma, which they protected by working out which supplies were critical and sinking mainly only those vessels as they crossed the Mediterranean.

Clive Robinson • August 20, 2020 8:25 AM

@ echo, Ismar,

I’m one of those people who think we should have international action witin five years not keep kicking the can down the road.

The sad fact is under a Capatalist system[1] the can will be kicked as long as there is some one prepared to hand over money, power, status, etc for it to be kicked as far as possible.

[1] Current sociological and psychological thinking is that the “Capitalist System” is the distiled essence of socio/psychopathic behavior[2], with some with significantly less ability to hide their traits showing extream narsistic personality disorder. Which often manifests it’s self by the narcissist when challenged with facts etc “loosing it” and exhibiting extream responses including both verbal and physical assault that are more than sufficient to attract severe criminal penalties. Testing of business leaders in large non shareholder led business corporations suggest that such mental health disorders are close to a hundred times that of the general population. They admit no wrong and argue that there aberrant behaviours are “leadership skills” etc.

[2] Apparently the usuall questionaire method of identifing the various psychopathic traits is not of necessity required. That is, a sufficient diagnosis for some is an analysis of how they manage opportunity/risk. If they chase unlikely “upside” opportunity with little or no “downside” risk consideration then either they are psychopaths or incurable gamblers, either way the resulting behavioir traits on the downside risk occuring is effectively the same inability to face not just responsibility but reality often in extream outbursts.