Utilities Cautioned About Potential for a Cyberattack After Ukraine’s - The New York Times

Sign of the times; also see ‘Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War,’ by Fred Kaplan (NYT review)

"Investigators say that in the end, the Ukrainians may have been saved by the fact that their country relies on old technology and is still not as fully wired as many Western nations — meaning they were able to restore power by manually flipping old-style circuit breakers.

“The bad news for the United States is that we can’t do the same thing,” said Ted Koppel, the former ABC News anchor who published a best seller last year, entitled “Lights Out,” about the vulnerability of the American electric grid.

“We have 3,200 power companies, and we need a precise balance between the amount of electricity that is generated and the amount that is used,” he said. “And that can only be done over a system run on the Internet. The Ukrainians were lucky to have antiquated systems.”"

Utilities Cautioned About Potential for a Cyberattack After Ukraine’s - The New York Times