Cloud Hosting

Millions without power; stores and banks shut down; vital services running on emergency generators if at all; lines of hapless people waiting for food and water. The experience that the state of Texas underwent this February will be only a preview of what we would all face in the event of a major cyberattack on our ever-vulnerable energy grid.

In the case of an attack by a future quantum computer, with its unprecedented power to decrypt existing encryption systems, the shutdown could be the most catastrophic disaster our country has ever experienced. Using data supplied by the global econometrics firm Oxford Economics, our researchers at Hudson Institutes Quantum Alliance Initiative have been working on a quantitative study of a future quantum cyberattack on the grid.Our preliminary data shows that protection of our power networks, needs to be an urgent national priority.

Experts have been warning us for years about how vulnerable the national power grid is to attacks by malicious actors like Russia, China, and Iran. The Department of Energy has a major task force, the North American Energy Resiliency Model (NAERM), looking into how to protect our energy grid from natural disasters but also terrorism and cyber assaults.

But a quantum computer attack would be far more protracted and far worse in its effects.Indeed, the smarter the grid is, with more supervision and control by computers, the more vulnerable it would be.

This is because a large-scale quantum computer in the future will be able to break into any encryption system currently protecting the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition computers that oversee the power grid.The structural design of a standard SCADA industrial control system relies on Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). These are the microprocessors that communicate and interact with field devices such as valves, pumps, and Human Machine Interface (HMI) software application that presents information to an operator or user about the state of an on-going process.That communication data is then routed from the processors to the SCADA computers, where the software displays and interprets the data allowing for operators to analyze and react to system events.

The danger is that a quantum computer will be able to gain access to these major nerve centers of the grid as if the attacker were a bona fide operator.This will allow the attacker to spread malware undetected throughout the grid, which will severely hinder response and recovery for weeks or months.

The notion of resilience in the nations power grid becomes obsolete.And instead of triggering a complete shutdown, a quantum intrusion can lead to sudden inexplicable power losses and sudden power surges that can melt down transformers and render entire power plants inoperable.

In short, the damage will be similar to that of an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) attack terrorism experts have feared for yearsbut stealthier, more unpredictable, and more protracted.

Even if the nations nuclear power plants are insulated from such an attack, the economic costs would be catastrophic.

How bad could the damage be?Our study indicates the direct economic cost of this quantum-led electricity outage would be over $8.6 trillion, with a disruptive impact extending over six fiscal quarters. Everything from financial markets to manufacturing and healthcare would be disrupted, for weeks or even months. Looking at the cost in terms of GDP at Risk or the integrated difference between the forecasted GDP growth for the economy and the estimations for GDP growth under the attack scenario, we have found that the total economic loss could extend over eight years or more at a cost of more than $20 trillion-roughly equivalent to the loss of an entire years output for the U.S. economy.

These numbers do not include the impact on Canadas economy, which is part of the North American Power Grid, or the global impact of a U.S. economy in a powerless free fall. Ironically, if Texas ignores the advice of Bill Gates and others that it join the national grid, it could be the one part of the country to emerge from such a disaster relatively unscathed.

What are the steps necessary to avoid such a scenario, and the devastating economic loss such an attack would entail?

First, we need to incentivize power companies to speed up protections for SCADA systems against conventional cyberattacks on the grid as well as future quantum ones. This means moving on deploying post-quantum cryptography, i.e. encryption based on algorithms that will withstand quantum intrusion, and quantum cryptography, i.e. encryption using quantum random number generation for its keys, to secure networks from hackers.

Second, we need to develop a national strategic reserve of Large Power Transformers (LPTs) that can be deployed in case of cyberattacks that specifically target LPTs, the essential sinews of the North American Power Grid.

Third, we need closer cooperation with Canada in working together on that grid, in order to mitigate the risks of attackwhether conventional today or quantum-based tomorrowas well as the damage done by natural disasters including climate change.

In the end, avoiding a Texas-like national shutdown of our power grid will be a matter of spending billions to offset the risk of losing trillions.Thats not a bad bargain when our entire economy, and economies around the world, are at risk.

View post:
Texas Warned Us What Quantum Computers Will Do To The Power Grid - Forbes