Reversemode

  Introduction Yesterday afternoon, I was writing what should have been the regular newsletter when the power suddenly went out. I wasn’t alarmed at all because I live in a mountain area, and power outages like this happen several times a year. It was a slightly windy day, so I assumed that maybe a tree had cracked and hit a low-voltage line or something similar. But, as it turns out, that wasn't the case. Instead, something unprecedented occurred, a 'zero energy' event: the power grid in Spain and Portugal went down completely. As we can see from the following graph coming from Red Eléctrica Española (transmission system operator responsible for managing the Spanish electricity system), at 12:35pm suddenly 15 GW of generation power went 'missing'. As the prime minister would explain during a press release: "in 5 seconds, 60% of the country's demand disappeared from the system". The interconnected power system is one of the most complex systems ever b...

The war that began with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has led to a series of unprecedented nuclear-related situations. During the first 48 hours, Chernobyl—a symbol of the deep-seated fear of nuclear disaster, especially within Europe—was taken by Russian troops. This was accompanied by reports of  radiation spikes, various plots involving dirty bombs and nuclear materials, and Russian soldiers allegedly killed by acute radiation syndrome. In the end, all of it was proven to be as fictitious as the reported radiation levels. We should view these mutual accusations between Ukraine and Russia as part of the information war, which likely didn’t come as a complete surprise to those in the know. For instance, in an insightful piece Politico published documenting the 'first-ever oral history of how top U.S. and Western officials saw the warning signs of a European land war,' John Kirby stated the following: Without time to recover from the shock caused by the events ...

A year ago, shortly after presenting the Chernobyl research , I was kind of surprised to find out that a plethora of brand-new Teleperm XS (2nd generation) components were available on eBay.   Framatome’s Teleperm XS  (TXS) is a digital Instrumentation & Control platform designed specifically for use in safety systems in Nuclear power plants, as a replacement for, or upgrades to their analog counterparts. It is one of the most widely used digital safety I&C platforms, sustaining the main defense line (Reactor Protection System, Engineered Safety Features Actuation System) in dozens of nuclear reactors globally, including Europe, USA, Russia, and China. Obviously, that was a good opportunity to dig deeper into the, usually, closed world of nuclear digital safety I&C systems, so I bought some of the most important TXS modules.  That was the starting point for the research I'm releasing today: " A Practical Analysis of Cyber-Physical Attacks Against Nuclear ...