China's hackers could have caused East Coast blackout… not!


Well how’s this for a Die Hard scenario: Chinese hackers are believed to control some of the electric power grids and may have caused blackouts in Florida and on the East Coast. How, you ask? Spyware!

Using “slurping” software, Chinese counterintelligence has grabbed data from businessmen. But wait, there’s more!

Kevin Poulsen calls the story bogus and so would I if my Chinese overlords wouldn’t stop my heroin dosage if I were to denounce them.

The official investigation into the February outage in Florida is ongoing, so I’ll be watching with eager eyes for signs of Chinese hackers when the final report comes out. But there’s no need to wait to evaluate the claim that hackers caused the northeastern blackout of 2003. The North American Electric Reliability Council spent six months investigating the outage.

Who are we to believe? My maniacal, inscrutable handlers or a bunch of kids. You decide, but please decide correctly or they’ll blow up Seattle.

Actually, this does sound like a lot of scare mongering and, if Chinese intelligence did control the power grids I doubt Wired would get the scoop before, say, the NSA. After all, China is the new “Ruskies” just as “terrorists” are the new “Hell’s Angels.”