From Joe Weiss’ blog:
Aurora was first publicly demonstrated at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in March 2007. Subsequent to the test, DHS held an invitation-only meeting with the utilities at the March PCSF meeting followed by NERC publishing the first NERC Aurora Advisory.
Aurora has a number of unique aspects:
The Aurora phenomena is a PHYSICAL gap in protection of the electric grid that affects EVERY substation (not just in North America)
Aurora demonstrated that cyber could exploit this physical gap in protection and cause physical damage
Aurora can ONLY be mitigated by hardware
Aurora affects generators as seen in the CNN tape, but also ALL AC motors and transformers
Aurora makes the utility the vector for the threat
Because of the For Official Use Only (FOUO) designation and the erroneous information, industry is generally misinformed about what actually happened at the Aurora test and what Aurora actually is
The misinformation is even higher among the utilities’ customers
DOD is responsible for assuring continuity of electric power at critical defense facilities. As such, DOD recognized the potential impacts from Aurora and initiated an Aurora hardware mitigation program. As a result, DOD is supporting two electric utilities in Aurora hardware implementation programs to demonstrate that the Aurora mitigation will not cause reliability issues.
Why is industry fighting a phenomena that every first year electrical engineering student learns?
Read the rest of his blog post at: http://www.controlglobal.com/blogs/unfettered/why-has-aurora-become-so-political-and-why-is-the-electric-industry-fighting-it/
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