Task Force: Blaster Not Root Of Blackout

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A U.S.-Canadian group says human and computer errors, not the Blaster worm or any infection, caused last August's power outage.

By TechWeb News

The blackout that put an estimated 50 million North Americans in the dark last August was caused by institutional, human, and computer errors, and not by the Blaster worm, as some speculated at the time, according to a report by a U.S. and Canadian task force.

Although the Aug. 14, blackout hit just three days after the debut of Blaster, a worm that exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that ultimately infected millions of machines, there was no cause and effect between the two, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force.

The task force's Security Working Group found "no evidence that malicious actors caused or contributed to the power outage, nor is there evidence that worms or viruses circulating on the Internet at the time of the power outage had an effect on power generation and delivery systems of the companies directly involved in the power outage," its report said Monday.

At the time, there had been speculation that the Blaster worm may have either caused or contributed to the outage.

While computer problems played a part in the power network collapse--a server and its backup at FirstEnergy Corp., the Ohio power company where the blackout began, had gone down and failed to alert technicians of impending danger--they weren't caused by any virus or worm. Nor was the blackout the result of any terrorist organization, the report said.

Al-Qaida reportedly had claimed responsibility for the attack, but FERC's findings found no evidence of any tampering with either the computer systems or the physical transmission lines.

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