The nation’s grid watchdog says social media was used to stress utilities during a two-day simulated attack on the electric grid that the government conducted with the industry last year, while phony cable news reports were used to add realism.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which coordinated the industry’s response, released a report Thursday on its findings.
The simulated attack, Nov. 18-19, began with widespread physical and computer-based cyber attacks on the U.S. electric grid by an unknown foe.
“As Move 1 unfolded, utility players began to experience unusual control system operation and received reports of substation break-ins and [drone] surveillance,” the report says.
As the second wave of attacks began, utilities “experienced an escalation in malware [computer virus] intrusions and coordinated physical attacks.” Alongside the coordinated strikes, simulated media, resembling cable news networks, reported that America was under attack. NERC says this was done to inject “added realism to the scenario.”
But on day 2, when the “copycat” attacks began to outpace utilities ability to respond, social media such as Twitter, Facebook and other applications were used to up the stress level in creating something akin to the fog of war, according to the report.
During the second day of the exercise, “copycat attacks and inaccurate social media reports further stressed utilities that continued to work with [reliability coordinators] and others to maintain grid reliability by implementing emergency control actions including load shedding and rotating outages,” the report reads.
It is a frequent criticism that social media is inaccurate and unreliable, which was underscored recently in the attack in Brussels. But it seems the U.S. government and utilities were already hip to this idea in November in conducting the exercise.
