infrastructure

38 Articles

Another California Water Crisis

May 1, 2017 by 69 Comments

It’s no secret that a vast amount of American infrastructure is in great need of upgrades, repairs or replacements. The repairs that are desperately needed will come, and they will come in one of two ways. Either proactive repairs can be made when problems are first discovered, or repairs can be made at considerably greater cost after catastrophic failures have occurred. As was the case with the I-35 bridge collapse in Minnesota, we often pay in lives as well. Part of the problem is that infrastructure isn’t very exciting or newsworthy to many people outside of the civil engineering community which leads to complacency and apathy. As a result, it’s likely that you may not have heard about the latest struggle currently playing out in California even though it involves the largest dam in the United States and its potential failure.

Surprisingly enough, the largest dam in the US isn’t the famous Hoover Dam but the Oroville Dam at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. At 235 meters, it is almost 15 meters taller than the Hoover Dam. It can store over four cubic kilometers of water but whether or not it will keep storing that water into the future is currently under question. In February of this year during a flood control operation damage was observed on the dam’s spillway where a massive hole had formed which only got larger as the dam was forced to continue releasing water. The hole quickly grew, and the floodwaters eroded much of the lower half of the spillway embankment, forming a canyon. Continue reading “Another California Water Crisis” →

Every Tornado Siren In Dallas Hacked

April 12, 2017 by 52 Comments

Someone had some fun with the Dallas early warning tornado siren system on Friday, April 8th. All 156 tornado sirens were hacked to go off just before midnight until they were manually turned off individually, reports The Washington Post. Thousands of residents flooded 911 call centers asking if they were under attack, if there was a tornado or if the zombie apocalypse had begun. The sirens were blaring for at least an hour and was originally put down as a malfunction, however it was later revealed that it was a hack and the “hacker” must have had physical access to the siren control center.

This isn’t the first time Dallas has had problems with “hackers” breaking into their infrastructure, Only last year some unknown person/persons hacked electronic road signs (a prank we’ve seen before) in and around Dallas claiming “Work is Canceled — Go Back Home” and “Donald Trump Is A Shape-shifting Lizard!!”. Mayor Mike Rawlings claims the perpetrators will be found and prosecuted although we don’t share his confidence since last year’s attackers are still at large.

The video below is one of many on YouTube filmed by bemused Dallas residents.

UPDATE: This hack seems to have been accomplished via DTMF signals broadcast on radio frequency in the clear. Recognizing the vulnerability after the fact, the system is now using some form of encryption for the control messages. Thanks [Dan J.] for posting this in the comments below.

Continue reading “Every Tornado Siren In Dallas Hacked” →

When The Grid Goes Dark

April 3, 2017 by 92 Comments

If you lived through the Y2K fiasco, you might remember a lot of hype with almost zero real-world ramifications in the end. As the calendar year flipped from 1999 to 2000 many forecast disastrous software bugs in machines controlling our banking and infrastructure. While this potential disaster didn’t quite live up to its expectations there was another major infrastructure problem, resulting in many blackouts in North America, that reared its head shortly after the new millennium began. While it may have seemed like Y2K was finally coming to fruition based on the amount of chaos that was caused, the actual cause of these blackouts was simply institutional problems with the power grid itself.

Continue reading “When The Grid Goes Dark” →