LameList!

I’m a sucker for a story that uses the words “spies,” “hackers,” “Chinese” and “Russian” in the same article.

The WSJ ran an interesting article about cyberspies penetrating our electrical grid (despite the fact that the article did not live up to its alarmist headline “Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated by Spies.”

Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. 

Several hours after reading this I took my 5-year old to Safeway. Unfortunately, the store was closed because the computers were down and would not come back up, we were told.  We could not even  use cash to purchase the dozen eggs we came to buy so we could color Easter eggs.  

Amazing.  The entire store was down because of computer problems.  Stores can no longer do cash transactions without computers.  

Though my son told the Safeway lady that I could fix it, I was more intrigued by the notion of cyperspies penetrating retail computer systems and the resulting impact.

For further related reading about the electrical grid, there’s also Wired magazine:  the informative “China and Russia vs. US Grid!”  and an extensive article  ”Power to the People: 7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now“