2 NEWS Investigates: Attacking the Grid

DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) - Right now there are terrorists trying to cut us off from what we need to survive: power, water, food, and our ability to communicate. But there are researchers right now, right here in the Miami Valley trying to beat them at their own game.

Remember the windstorm of 2008? Take that catastrophe and spread it across the entire country. Imagine if the lights went out for 304 million people for 10 days.

At the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base people like Juan Lopez Jr. are fighting terrorists by trying to stay a step ahead of them. He uses a mock power grid to demonstrate how easy it is to disrupt the power grid which connects us to electricity. Lopez said he's using this model to learn how to attack the grid. Those attacks that will teach him to how to protect it.

"Computers need to talk to pass information back and forth within the grid and outside the grid," he explained. "When you do that you inherit vulnerabilities that come with technology."

General Walter Givhan, who just recently returned from Afghanistan, Is the man in charge. Givhan said what's going on in this cyberspace research lab isn't much different than what's happening on the battlefield except in cyberspace, there's a hidden danger.

"It's a daunting domains much is possible, so many people play in it, but we're one of the ones playing in it and we're the strongest player here right now," Givhan said.

Like Givhan and Lopez, Dr. Richard Raines, the director of the Center for Cyberspace Research at Wright-Patterson is trying to stay one step ahead of the terrorists.

"What you don't know is really scary in this environment because how fast it's changing over time," said Raines.

What's changing is technology. The grid, in its current configuration is a vast network of hard wires that snake across the country. However, it's reaching the end of its life cycle. It's less expensive to use wireless technology to connect everyone on the grid. But in doing so there is a greater risk.

The good news according to Dr. Raines is that there's no one single vulnerability. No hole in the system can take the entire system down. But it isn't foolproof.

Flash back to August 2003. More than 100 power plants shut down and millions of people lost power when, according to a task force's final report, a problem in Ohio sent a ripple effect through the northeast. Terrorists did not cause that blackout, but the alarming incident prompted the military and private utilities to work together to better protect the grid.

Foreign governments have already encountered attacks to their power grids and they've been able to break them up.

Protecting our vast grid will cost billions of dollars. But keep in mind, an attack on the grid could lead to days without power, food, water, transportation, and spotty, if any communication.