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Are the California Fires Cyber Terrorism?

November 12, 2018 

Wildfire Fallout: California Utility PG&E Stock Plummets

Did Foreign Hackers Sabotage California Power Lines?


Smoke from the wildfire near Malibu
Photo by Grant Denham

If you look for the origin and the cause of the Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise, California, and the ongoing fires near Los Angeles you will find that in both cases the fires began in places where there had been unexplained malfunctions along transmission lines just before the fire was reported.

The question has to be asked: Were these fires caused by hackers attacking the utility grids in an act of cyber warfare?

The following is an extract from today's article, "PG&E trading halted as stock plummets most in 16 years on wildfire fallout"

The wildfires in northern and southern California have sent shares of the state’s two largest utility owners falling the most since the power crisis more than a decade ago.

Trading in PG&E Corp. was briefly halted Monday after shares plummeted more than 37 percent. The stock has fallen as much as 48 percent in two days of trading since the Camp Fire broke out north of San Francisco last week...

Investors are concerned about utility liabilities associated with the fires. Authorities are investigating electrical equipment as one of several possible causes of the so-called Camp Fire, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco. A PG&E transmission line in the area went offline 15 minutes before the blaze was first reported, and the company reported finding a damaged transmission tower near where investigators say the fire began.

Edison’s Southern California Edison utility said late Friday a power outage occurred near the suspected starting point of one of the fires near Los Angeles and that a sensor detected a disturbance in its equipment two minutes before the blaze was reported. The company said there had been no determination of origin or cause and that it will cooperate with the investigation.

The wildfires have destroyed more than 6,700 structures and could cost the state, insurers and homeowners at least $19 billion in damages, according to an estimate by Enki Research.

Source: "PG&E trading halted as stock plummets most in 16 years on wildfire fallout," by Joe Ryan, Bloomberg, Nov. 12, 2018

WHO MIGHT BE ENGAGED IN SUCH CYBER TERRORISM?

Unit 8200 of the Israeli military would have to be at the top of the list of suspects behind any false-flag hacking operation. Unit 8200 is the largest unit of the Israeli army and its specialty is hacking into computer networks.

Israelis like Amit Yoran have made a career out of hacking into energy and utility networks, as I explained in Chapter VII of Solving 9/11, "The Architecture of Terror." The following extracts explain who Amit Yoran is and how his company Riptech hacked into energy company networks around the world...


Amit Yoran is an Israeli hacker who made a career out of hacking public utilities.  Before 9/11, he served as a Network Security Manager at the Department of Defense and was responsible for maintaining operations of the Pentagon's network. Yoran also served as an officer in the United States Air Force [as the Director of Vulnerability Programs for Dept. of Defense's Computer Emergency Response Team]. 

AMIT YORAN'S "ETHICAL HACKERS"

"Mr. [Amit] Yoran is chief executive of Riptech, a U.S. company that employs 'ethical hackers' to test vulnerability of networks, including those of utility companies," the Irish Times reported on October 5, 2001. "He [Yoran] says his teams have had success in disrupting utilities' power networks, in Europe particularly," according to the article, which was aptly titled, "Welcome to the Art of Electronic Warfare." The Yorans' company hacked into the computer networks of dozens of energy companies, the Los Angeles Times reported on August 20, 2001:

Riptech Inc., a security company in Alexandria, Va., has tested security for dozens of energy-industry clients. In every case, the firm penetrated Internet-connected corporate networks and often hopped from those networks into supposedly sealed grid-control systems, according to Riptech's president, Amit Yoran.

A hacker in the "grid-control systems" of a energy company could easily cause a malfunction that could cause a fire.  This is a possibility that needs to be taken into consideration in the investigation of these wildfires that are reported to have been ignited by malfunctions in the power grid.

See more at: 

"Hacking U.S. Energy Grid: Is Israel setting Russia up?" Bollyn.com, March 16, 2018

www.bollyn.com/is-israel-setting-russia-up/

"The Architecture of Terror: Mapping the Network Behind 9/11," Chapter VII, Solving 9-11:  The Deception that Changed the World, 2012 

www.bollyn.com/the-architecture-of-terror-mapping-the-network-behind-9-11