Power sub-stations and water treatment plants are virtually un-guarded throughout the country. You don't have to knock out power plants to knock out power. Heritage foundation states that there are ~55,000 electric power sub-stations. Another source stated that there are 153,000 drinking water systems. Of course, many of those 153,000 are probably rural systems serving a small population. From a report to the President in December 2016:
Of these 150,000 systems, 50,000 are community watersystems that supply water to the same population year‐round; these serve over 300 million Americans. The community water systems that rely on surface water as their source serve about 200 million people, those that rely on ground water about 100 million. Just 3 percent of the community water systems—those that serve over 10,000 people each—provide the drinking water for 79 percent of the U.S.population.
This means that ~1500 water treatment systems supply water to 79% of the U.S. population, and means that it wouldn't take many people to knock out the water supply of ~276 million people!
I'll let someone else do the analyis of how many substations would need to be taken out to cut power to X percent of the population.
There are 3 power grids in the US - East, West, and ERCOT (most of Texas). Taking out substations will work on a small scale, but the real target would be the grids themselves. They are being attacked every day, all the time by individual as well as state-sponsored hackers. Eventually someone will likely succeed on one of the grids - potentially taking out up to 1/3 of the country depending on which grid is hit.
That said, substations are still a target of opportunity. They would for example be an easy way to disrupt communications in a city/town before an armed attack.
As for the water treatment plants - it wouldn't take a bunch of them being attacked to do damage. If people start hearing water plants are being poisoned they will stop using city water, buy up every bottle of water they can find, and a lot of people will end up dehydrated due to paranoia of their water being poisoned (whether true or not).
If attackers went these routes I'd expect them to do it in the middle of winter when a lot of the country has frozen lakes, heating is absolutely required, and big events like the SuperBowl or NCAA Football playoffs are happening.
Part of my job when I was working as an NRC Cyber Inspector was to postulate attack scenarios on our nuclear plants so they could protect against those scenarios. That was pretty hard to do with the numerous systems each plant had, but it was actually a lot of fun. Especially when the plant leadership agreed with our findings and could fix the issues they didn't know they had. I miss that.
Edit - just thought of another issue if for example the West grid went down, or LA substations were attacked. Think how many Teslas could end up unable to make it home when all the charging stations are down. People either stranded at home of on the highway trying to make it somewhere safe. Yet another reason to avoid electric cars.
Power sub-stations and water treatment plants are virtually un-guarded throughout the country. You don't have to knock out power plants to knock out power. Heritage foundation states that there are ~55,000 electric power sub-stations. Another source stated that there are 153,000 drinking water systems. Of course, many of those 153,000 are probably rural systems serving a small population. From a report to the President in December 2016:
Of these 150,000 systems, 50,000 are community watersystems that supply water to the same population year‐round; these serve over 300 million Americans. The community water systems that rely on surface water as their source serve about 200 million people, those that rely on ground water about 100 million. Just 3 percent of the community water systems—those that serve over 10,000 people each—provide the drinking water for 79 percent of the U.S.population.
This means that ~1500 water treatment systems supply water to 79% of the U.S. population, and means that it wouldn't take many people to knock out the water supply of ~276 million people!
I'll let someone else do the analyis of how many substations would need to be taken out to cut power to X percent of the population.
Good research on the numbers!
There are 3 power grids in the US - East, West, and ERCOT (most of Texas). Taking out substations will work on a small scale, but the real target would be the grids themselves. They are being attacked every day, all the time by individual as well as state-sponsored hackers. Eventually someone will likely succeed on one of the grids - potentially taking out up to 1/3 of the country depending on which grid is hit.
That said, substations are still a target of opportunity. They would for example be an easy way to disrupt communications in a city/town before an armed attack.
As for the water treatment plants - it wouldn't take a bunch of them being attacked to do damage. If people start hearing water plants are being poisoned they will stop using city water, buy up every bottle of water they can find, and a lot of people will end up dehydrated due to paranoia of their water being poisoned (whether true or not).
If attackers went these routes I'd expect them to do it in the middle of winter when a lot of the country has frozen lakes, heating is absolutely required, and big events like the SuperBowl or NCAA Football playoffs are happening.
Part of my job when I was working as an NRC Cyber Inspector was to postulate attack scenarios on our nuclear plants so they could protect against those scenarios. That was pretty hard to do with the numerous systems each plant had, but it was actually a lot of fun. Especially when the plant leadership agreed with our findings and could fix the issues they didn't know they had. I miss that.
Edit - just thought of another issue if for example the West grid went down, or LA substations were attacked. Think how many Teslas could end up unable to make it home when all the charging stations are down. People either stranded at home of on the highway trying to make it somewhere safe. Yet another reason to avoid electric cars.
Stuxnet
the answer is always Stuxnet
everyone is scared shitless of it
there is a theory that the major/critical nodes were replaced during 'covid'
you cannot clean Stuxnet - you have to replace the equipment. ALL of it.
It's fiendishly brilliant
Just did a quick review of Stuxnet; wow! I guess I had vaguely heard of it years ago, but didn't know the details.
Allegedly the Israelis created it to slow kill Iranian centrifuges. Allegedly.