Apagão: Clima ou Hackers?

[deadcow]

Será coincidencia apenas?

[oz mode on]

Report: Cyber Attacks Caused Power Outages in Brazil

* By Kevin Poulsen Email Author
* November 7, 2009
* 12:55 am

Electrical blackouts impacting millions of people in Brazil in 2005 and 2007 were caused by hackers targeting control systems, according to the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes.

(Update: Brazilian Blackout Traced to Sooty Insulators, Not Hackers)

In a show set to air Sunday night, CBS blames a two-day outage in Espirito Santo in 2007 on a hack attack. The blackout affected three million people. Another, smaller blackout north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005 was also triggered by computer intruders, the network claims.

Reports that hacker-extortionists triggered at least one blackout outside the U.S. first surfaced last year, based on comments made by the CIA’s chief cybersecurity officer, Tom Donahue, who declined to identify any country or the specifics of the alleged attacks. In an interview with Threat Level’s Kim Zetter last month, former cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke publicly named Brazil as a hack attack blackout victim for the first time, but didn’t go into details.

60 Minutes hasn’t distinguished itself with its cyber reporting in the past: the show’s alarmist piece on the Conficker botnet showed a picture of a gang of ruthless Russian hackers that turned out to be a bunch of school kids from Finland, and the show’s recent report on internet piracy was rank with unchecked Hollywood talking points. Earlier reports from other media sources about hacker-triggered blackouts within the U.S. proved false.

But it seems unlikely that CBS would pin itself to a claim like this — naming specific, and real blackouts — without solid investigative sourcing beyond the usual suspects in the U.S. intelligence community and cyber security vendors. If they were wrong, their claims would be quickly disputed from within Brazil.

So Threat Level will be tuning in Sunday, and beginning Monday may have to be a little less snarky in its Cybarmageddon coverage. We might even have to rethink those Finnish kids.

Update 11-08-09 1:45 pm: The Brazilian government and the local energy company Furnas are denying the CBS News claim, according to today’s edition of the Brazilian newspaper Folha. Raphael Mandarino Junior, director of the Homeland Security Information and Communication of the Institutional Security Cabinet of the Presidency, also told the paper he’s investigated the claims and found no evidence of hacker attacks.

Update 11-08-09 11:55 pm: The show has aired, and we now know that 60 Minutes’ extraordinary hacker blackout claim comes from “half-a-dozen” sources in the military, intelligence and security communities — not one of which is named. That doesn’t mean the story is false, but the show did lead with former Bush intel chief Mike McConnell. And, really, if you’re sourcing McConnell, you might as well just make it up yourself.

There was no mention in the broadcast that the power company and the Brazilian government dispute the claim.


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Brazilian Blackout Traced to Sooty Insulators, Not Hackers

* By Marcelo Soares
* November 9, 2009
* 6:15 pm

 

SAO PAULO, Brazil — A massive 2007 electrical blackout in Brazil has been newly blamed on computer hackers, but was actually the result of a utility company’s negligent maintenance of high voltage insulators on two transmission lines. That’s according to reports from government regulators and others who investigated the incident for more than a year.

In a broadcast Sunday night, the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes cited unnamed sources in making the extraordinary claim that a two-day outage in the Atlantic state of Espirito Santo was triggered by hackers targeting a utility company’s control systems. The blackout affected 3 million people. Hackers also caused another, smaller blackout north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005, the network claimed.

Brazilian government officials disputed the report over the weekend, and Raphael Mandarino Jr., director of the Homeland Security Information and Communication Directorate, told the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo that he’s investigated the claims and found no evidence of hacker attacks, adding that Brazil’s electric control systems are not directly connected to the internet.

The utility company involved, Furnas Centrais Elétricas, told Threat Level on Monday, it “has no knowledge of hackers acting in Furnas’ power transmission system.”

insulatorA review of official reports from the utility, the country’s independent systems operator group and its energy regulatory agency turns up nothing to support the hacking claim.

The earliest explanation for the blackout came from Furnas two days after the Sept. 26, 2007, incident began. The company announced that the outage was caused by deposits of dust and soot from burning fields in the Campos region of Espirito Santo. “The concentration of these residues would have been exacerbated by the lack of rain in the region for eight months,” the company said.

Brazil’s independent systems operator group later confirmed that the failure of a 345-kilovolt line “was provoked by pollution in the chain of insulators due to deposits of soot” . And the National Agency for Electric Energy, Brazil’s energy regulatory agency, concluded its own investigation in January 2009 and fined Furnas $3.27 million for failing to maintain the high-voltage insulators on its transmission towers.

Cascading electrical failures like the one in Espirito Santo often have a number of contributing factors, and it’s possible that the poorly maintained insulators were only the most conspicuous element in the 2007 incident.

Reports that hackers triggered at least one blackout outside the United States first got wide attention last year, based on comments made by the CIA’s chief cybersecurity officer, Tom Donahue. He declined, however, to identify any country or the specifics of the alleged attacks. The blackout claim even made it into a speech given by President Obama in May. “In other countries cyberattacks have plunged entire cities into darkness,” Obama said, not mentioning the cities. In an interview with Threat Level last month, former cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke named Brazil as a hack-attack blackout victim, but didn’t provide verifiable details.

In some versions of the story, the hackers were trying to extort money from the utility. The 60 Minutes broadcast this week — which cited six unnamed sources in the intelligence, military and cybersecurity communities — was the first to peg the story to specific blackouts. CBS did not repeat the extortion claim, reporting instead that the location and motives of the hackers are a mystery.

Fallout from the story kept telephones ringing in Brazil’s electricity sector Monday. “Everyone’s been calling us all day about it,” said a beleaguered spokesman with the National Operator of the Electric System.

Top image: Sao Paolo endures a power outage in 1999.
Dario Lopez-Mills/AP


Link do 60 minutes: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5578986n&tag=api

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Furnas e Ministério evitam falar sobre ataque hacker como motivo do blecaute

Aneel, ONS e Ministério de Minas e Energia se reunirão hoje para analisar causas

O sistema de Furnas, responsável por levar a energia gerada em Itaipu para o Sul e Sudeste do país, evitou comentar nesta quarta-feira (11) qualquer possibilidade de que o blecaute que atingiu dez Estados na noite de ontem tenha sido causado por algum ataque de piratas virtuais (popularmente conhecidos como hackers).

O ministro de Minas e Energia, Edison Lobão, também não falou sobre o assunto na noite de ontem. Ele comentou que o mais provável é que um temporal tenha sido o responsável pelo desligamento de Itaipu e consequentemente pelo apagão.

Nesta tarde, devem se reunir o Ministério de Minas e Energia, a Aneel (Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica) e a ONS (Operador Nacional do Sistema) para analisar as causas.

Na imprensa internacional vários veículos citaram o problema, que também afetou o Paraguai. O site Sky News disse que a queda de energia aconteceu apenas três dias depois da rede americana CBS ter atribuído a piratas virtuais outros apagões que aconteceram no Brasil em 2005 e 2007.


O jornal americano The New York Times lembrou a mesma reportagem da rede CBS.

Este foi o terceiro blecaute em dez anos sofrido pelo Brasil. O primeiro grande apagão brasileiro aconteceu em 17 de setembro de 1985, quando nove Estados ficaram sem luz por cerca de três horas. Mas o termo apagão ficou “conhecido” mesmo no país em 1999, quando dez Estados e o Distrito Federal ficaram cerca de quatro horas no escuro.





me parece estranho essa coincidencia toda, as noticias foram saindo lá fora, a imprensa daqui do brasil não se manifestou a respeito, e culminou com um terceiro apagão no brasil. o que vocês acham?

[taco]

eu tinha lido ha alguns dias atras uma noticia no slashdot falando que um dos apagoes poderia ter sido causado por hackers, lembrei disso ontem

mas provavelmente nunca vamos saber o que realmente aconteceu

[sibs]

iueh cara.. eu fico de cara que tenha A MENOR POSSIBILIDADE de algo assim ser criado por hacker sentado em casa pela internet.

esse eh o tipo de coisa que deveria ser IMPOSSIVEL.

[Zedd]

Olha
Eu posso te dizer que se o cara conseguiu fazer isso, ele é realmente foda
Pra mim, por exemplo, é impossível.

[DeMolay]

"FIRE SALE"

[hardz]

acabei de ver isso no uol.

descarto fortemente.
/close

[Lev]

nenhum dos dois

corpi queria meter de luz apagada

/next

[Sh3lld3r]

Foi o emosux !!! :}

[DeMolay]

**********?

[Many Kalaveraa]

Die Hard 4!

[gori]

só queria saber pq demoraram tanto pra ligar pra DELL.

[intel]

vaca ta se entregando?

[Kr0N]

eu acho q eles deveriam c preocupar com os blackouts deles...e dexa os nossos em paz!!!

[vegetous]

daqui pouco vão falar que o apagão de 1962 foi provocado por hackers!

[Tchelo]

Eu acho que foi ataque terrorista!

[Gerson]

Foram os ET's!

[DeMolay]

Terroristas?
Hackers?
Apagões?

 

Ele resolve

[Kamael]

Acho que foi o Eluan

[deadcow]

Eu errei, no titulo da thread deveria ser clima, hackers ou governo americano, um apagao no brasil tumultuaria a situaçao lá fora e o governo conseguiria mais dinheiro pro combate ao cyberterrorismo, tá zicado porque o pessoal inventou o boato dos hackers no brasil e ta usando o brasil como exemplo pra pedir dinheiro, e isso nao é verdade. nunca aconteceu isso no brasil (btw, nao que não seja possivel), mas nao aconteceu, vamos esperar o desenrolar dessa situação aqui no brasil, Não demora vai começar rumores quanto a ataques cyberneticos provenientes dos eua.

[Many Kalaveraa]

Aposto que os hackers são de Sorocaba..

[picohq]

Segundo a querídissima avó do War foi coisa do Hugo Chávez.
Foi um plano mirabolante pra deixar o Brasil às cegas e invadir nosso amado país!

[Rath]

rapaz... tudo isso ai eh perfeitamente possível

[dos Pampas]

hum... acho que se fossem hackers nao demorariam tanto pra resolver o problema ou nao tambem, mas nao foi o caso, ng falou em pane em computadores ou equipes hackers de emergencia para solucionar o problema sim podem ter abafado tudo obviamente mas nao acredito.

Só acredito que agora os traficantes e o resto do mundo sabem que uma unica bomba no brasil, lá pras bandas de foz do iguaçu, finda-se a guerra com derrota brasileira.

[Suricatta]

Algum de vcs realmente leu as materias pra ver que os computadores que controlam o sistema NÃO estão ligados na internet?

Alias prestem atenção a esse paragrafo tbm:

"The show has aired, and we now know that 60 Minutes’ extraordinary hacker blackout claim comes from “half-a-dozen” sources in the military, intelligence and security communities — not one of which is named. That doesn’t mean the story is false, but the show did lead with former Bush intel chief Mike McConnell. And, really, if you’re sourcing McConnell, you might as well just make it up yourself."

Eles precisavam ter colocado

[diazepan]

daqui a pouco vao dizer que pacotaram itaipu e deu time out

[Putzolino]

By Kevin Poulsen

Apropriado o autor

[rockafeller]

foi o DIE
hueahueheauheau

o Skiper pacotou itaipu.

[spdio]

Postado por DeMolay

Terroristas?
Hackers?
Apagões?

 

Ele resolve

Pensei exatamente a mesma coisa, rs!