Title pretty much covers it:
Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism.
April Sniper Attack Knocked Out Substation, Raises Concern for Country's Power Grid.
Story at Wall Street Journal Online

Thoughts?
-Blast

it doesn't take a large hole to drain the cooling oil out of a power transformer....around .308"

This is indeed most concerning, a SINGLE attack such as the one reported is unlikely to have severe consequences, but a concerted attack at a number of sites over a large geograpahical area could result in severe disruption.

Substations are inherently vulnerable, they are large, in the open air, and no matter how secure fencing is made, still vulnerable to rifle fire from a considerable distance.

Large transformers are normally equiped with safety devices that monitor the oil level and take the transformer off line if the oil is lost. This would still interupt supply in the case of a large scale attack, but should save the transformer. It can be restored to use after mending the hole and re filling with oil.

It is my view that the government should subsidise the manufacture of perhaps a few dozen spare very large transformers, these are readily available in modest numbers from several suppliers. A sudden need for say 50 under emergency conditions would be problematic, but ordering perhaps 10 a year whilst times are normal and keeping these at strageic locations could help a lot. Spare transformers could be hidden or well gaurded, perhaps on military bases that are already secure.

For the individual, this should be another reason for preps in general, off grid electricity, food, fuel, water etc, as widely disscussed on these forums.

For essiential industries and services, this should be another reason to keep standby generating plant in good order, and to keep plenty of fuel.

Pacific Gas and Electric is not very popular with environmental groups, and others have claimed that the company failed to pay it's taxes and put huge sums instead into lobbying. The damage could easily have been caused by eco-terrorists, or disgruntled employees who have issues with the company.

Just as media and gov't types of late attribute every forest and brush fire to 'hunters', they are quick to finger foreign terrorists as the culprit here, and expanded gov't as the only remedy.

Substations are no more vulnerable than our transportation systems, oil and gas pipelines, wind generators, or water supply. A bullet is just a little metal pellet, not an explosive device. Private business can better design substations, and easily place cheap concrete and metal shielding around critical components in existing vulnerable substations. The use of surveillance systems, and fault detection systems already in place could be improved without too much effort.

Except experience has shown that private business has been loath to spend the money (unless forced to by government) to properly maintain such things as oil/gas pipelines and other infrastructure, for even normal operations, let alone make them more robust against deliberate sabotage.

For example, just ask folks in Michigan and Arkansas about oil pipelines, and folks in California and Canada about gas pipelines.

The WSJ article is behind a paywall, here's one that isn't: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Ter...243731551.html.

It appears that this attack happened in April 2013. Nobody lost power, and nobody was arrested.

If it's difficult to protect electrical substations from this sort of attack, it should be fairly easy to put together a detection system and a response plan. Would that stop a large-scale planned attack against critical infrastructure? No. But it would likely allow for single actors to be caught and incarcerated.

At about 1:18 in the video, it is said that "this could be an example of how cyber-terrorism could threaten. . ."

Huh?

The cyber-terrorists are now using sniper weapons and cutting cables at power stations?

The hype dial is getting maxed out over this.

Yeah, the incident really deserves investigation. But not every crime is an indication of a terrorist plot.

To paraphrase Freud, "Sometimes a crime is just a crime."

I can't consider this just a crime. Someone who does this intends to deprive many people of electric power. That's an act of terrorism in itself, whether or not the perpetrators are trying to make a political statement. The crimes of "trespassing" and "vandalism" don't get the job done here.

Terrorists! We call them Travelers in Scotland..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-25432545

Substations within the Grid aren't the weakest link, its the nuts and bolts on the legs of the HV Transmission pylons on the interconnects between the grid nodes. These are virtually un-defensible against a synchronized terrorist attack.

Dig up a few (around 30 Fibre Optic cable fat pipes on the East and west coast on the USA) and the Internet could also be taken down across the world

BTW Travelers in the UK, armed with a JCB digger has also been able to disable the most important RAF Air force base in the UK, but the News Media haven't been able to tell anyone.

I respectfully disagree. Taking out the substation did not cause a power outage. The attacker here clearly had significant knowledge of his target, and it could reasonably be assumed he knew that it wouldn't. It appears to me that his goal was to damage things and make PG&E spend a lot of money fixing them.

Even if the goal was to deprive electrical power from a largish group of people, it would seem to greatly expand the definition of "terrorism" from "making war upon civilian noncombatants" or "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims".

Strange terrorism reporting indeed! Texas based Enron Corp were much more effective in their rolling blackouts/brownout economic terrorism ops in California with the push of a few computer keys a few years back

I don't buy terrorism either unless it was (as has been speculated) a dry run:
* seeing how much damage could be done with a rifle,
* how long it would take,
* What steps are taken to mitigate the damage,
From that one could possibly analyze how much bigger the real attack would need to be in order to achieve whatever goal is planned.

But that's all speculation. As a single act calling this terrorism is a stretch, but cutting fiber cables prior to firing 100 shots "to "methodically" make transformers overheat and shut down" seems like more than a couple yokels out for a hoot. It was well planned apparently with prior knowledge of the substation; I'm surprised they left their brass.

Hope whoever is investigating this has more than 100 pieces of brass.

The original story that the WSJ based theirs on

http://complex.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/24/power-station-military-assault

I don't think this was a coventional terrorist attack. Eco-terrorist maybe, but blasting away at a single substation that didn't cause a power outage seems fairly ineffective in light of the vulnerabilities exposed by the September 2011 power outage in SoCal.

IMHO, it's too premeditated to be just vandlism. I think it's just one disgruntled individual and not a terrorist dry run.

Terrorism is just a label, the assessment is that if you take down a couple SV or Calf substations at a need for high production, the grid or a big chunk of it fails and can't be brought back up without replacement transformers that aren't there. If the avg electrical engineer agrees with that, then some expense to shield transformers are in order as well as production of replacement transformers to hold in inventory: locate them regionally so they can be trucked to the site of a failure or attack and maintaining the grid in this context may be economically feasible.

Armored doors on cockpits -a debated topic prior to 911 that has lost the sense of being debatable since, every major jet has them now.

So all this happened last April....When will the other shoe drop??? These must be exceptionally scholarly, thoughtful ,and methodical "terrorists" indeed....

I resist this continued disclaiming of 'terrorists' because there's no evidence of it - but I do want to point out that current 'terrorists' do recon on potential attack points to the extent possible without detection or any overt connection to terrorist activity, and this was also a modus in the 911 attacks well in advance. Any nut job will recon his objective.The point that the original story made is a vulnerability exists in the electric grid, and hearing from others over the years this is one of many, but a fairly attractive one for attackers.

I work at a software company where our software is under persistent attack, millions of attempts per day, and we put up the equivalent of shields around transformers, detection, hardening etc etc. Its an ongoing process. We don't consider any random attack the result of terrorists, they are attackers plain and simple. To differentiate software from the electrical grid, by far the greatest number of our attackers are out for financial gain, followed by a fair number doing it for kicks. The attack points used today are different than the ones once used, we've put up sufficient mitigations to prevent or deter (by things as simple as raising the costs or chances of detection) most attacks [CORRECTION EDIT: *DON'T USE] the original attack points. Dedicated attackers will up their game and change tactics - they are pretty smart for criminals, smart enough for the software industry and software using industries to incur billions of dollars of risk mitigation against them.

So if the electrical grid is considered as a system vulnerable to attack, any attack from a lone gunman to a conspiracy with an intention to harm the US, you should take seriously the identified vulnerabilities and take a methodical approach to hardening critical infrastructure from future attack. We know the grid is a potential target for terrorists because of intercepted intel - photos and documents for example describing the grid and how to take it down - but we don't know if this is the act of any specific terrorist organization. It shouldn't matter, unless you can connect it to them. This attack sounds a darned sight more feasible than an EMP, but there is probably a long list of vulnerabilities to address, and it may be number 1 or it could be number 244 in severity or system vulnerability. To me the only folly is in an electric industry that resists the costs to mitigate attacks, that sounds foolish. We all do that now, its the cost of doing business in a turbulent world.

There are certainly a lot of puzzling aspects to this. On the one hand it clearly wasn't just a couple of yahoos looking for some fun after a night of drinking. There seems to have been quite a bit of planning involved. Also, someone clearly knew something about the technical aspects of how substations and transformers work, and where to access and cut the fiber optic cables. This suggests either inside knowledge and/or considerable research. All of that, plus the reports that over a hundred rounds were fired suggests that it was probably not a lone individual, but more likely involved several people.

On the other hand, one must ask what was the motive was? If they intended to disable the grid, they failed. One article said that this substation was fairly far down the list of most critical points in the California grid. Apparently there are other substations that if disabled would have a much bigger impact on the electric grid, and would be harder to work around. (For obvious reason the power companies aren't saying which those are.) So why go to all this effort (and risk of being caught) for a relatively low value target?

Some have suggested that it was a dress rehersal for a larger, more devasting attack. To me that also seems a bit puzzling. If one is planning a larger attack, why tip off the target about your methods? As a result of this attack the government and electric utilities will obviously take whatever small steps they can in the short term to make the infrastructure less vulnerable, and increase security at the most critical points. And in the longer term they will likely make bigger steps to harden the system. Any new substations will probably be built with more security in mind. And the FBI is now on the case. While none of this will make it impossible to do a similar, larger attack, it will become more difficult with a greater risk of getting caught.

All in all very puzzling.

I wonder if the attack was specifically done as part of a message to someone/some agency. You know, like a warning shot followed or preceded by an actual message. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot more information that wasn't released to the public.

What was happening last April that might make someone want to tell the USA to "back off"?

-Blast, about to wrap his head in tinfoil.

If the attack itself was not particularly effective, perhaps that wasn't the intent. Heck, perhaps some "security consultant" who could charge the utility a lot of money for a security audit of their facilities is drumming up business without causing any significant disruptions and without getting caught?

I read one report that said the shots were placed in such a way to avoid causing any immediate fires or sparks from the transformers, and just create holes to drain the oil inside. That way, drivers along the freeway in the distance would be less likely to notice anything and call the authorities.

Russ... I deleted as you requested... but if that scenario has not been anticipated by Homeland Security then I need a refund of all of my income tax money....

Lots of ways to do it. No need to give them advice on their tactics.

have to agree that this is a senseless attack. could be just random venting by someone with a grievance. or maybe someone tried to shut down power so they could rob a bank???? but I would not be surprised to see more random destruction like this. it's too bad 'cuz it just hurts everybody.

Pete

Terrorism isn't just a label, it's a big part of the budget process.

When I was a small boy (think an evil The Beaver) I used to go by the city water tank on the way to the pool. I'd throw small pebbles at the tank because it made neat noises when I could hit it, and different parts "ping"d differently.

It's not hard to imagine that were I somewhat older and a lot of dumber I'd wonder what other things in remote areas sounded like when hit.

And I always used to listen for spoil-sport Adults and run at any noise, just like these guys (cars are not hard to hear at night).

The main reason I have trouble seeing this as a precursor attack is that they took such a big risk of getting caught. But the grid really is fragile: nobody likes redundant transmission lines in their back yard, nor the cost added to their electric bills.

PS. Hollywood always portrays the adversary as an Evil Genius, but sometimes they're really an Evil Moron.