blaster worm caused the big blackout?

[1capybara]

the power stations used DCOM, the blaster worm used DCOM
check out this link

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babe....de/newsticker/data/ju-15.08.03-001/&lp=de_en

which is where i got this quote:
"......This power supplier is specified as a reference customer of Northern Dynamics. This company calls itself as "Home OF the OPC Experts" and offers a set of products, which use OPC for communication with control and control systems. OPC stands for Process control "for" OLE for and touches down on Microsofts COM/DCOM model. That is however exactly the technology with the safety hole, which the worm W32.Blaster uses. In a net, in which this worm is active, malfunctioned due to the regular restarts, which observe now final users also concerned with their PCS, DCOM communication and concomitantly OPC on ungepatchten systems."
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the blackout could have started with lightning or a fallen tree limb. that would have caused a local outage. but in a system with circuit breakers everywhere, it would not have spread to be such a large regional outage.

 

[John Lewis]

Last I heard, hiring practices at control centers in the Cleveland area were being looked at. I read an article stating that an employee there, named only as "Homer" had been eating donuts and fantasizing about goofing off when he was supposed to be watching the lines. Article went on to say that "Mr. Simpson" had been targeted in investigations of mishaps at his previous employer, an unspecified nuclear facility.

Seriously though, I was somewhat concerned that something similar to Blaster could be the culprit as a lot of utilities to rely on embedded systems that are built around DCOM. Don't think that's the case. I don't think they would have been able to cover that kind of problem up -- too many different companies pointing fingers at each other. I would also think that kind of attack would be more widespread. Not necessarily a bigger area, but probably many smaller areas spread across the continent.

 

[dilettante]

Good one, but it has already been well established in the series that the Simpsons live in an unnamed southern state.

That said, I find their accents somewhat mysterious.

 

[1capybara]

and the same company was hit by the slammer worm in
january

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1227049,00.asp

and slammer "disabled the safety warning system for 5 hours
at their nuclear plant"

http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2003/08/63249.php

so really, DCOM is no secret to anyone by now