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By Applelinks Senior Editor John H. Farr
On the back page of our daily paper is an Associated Press article entitled "Nuclear Plants Warned of Computer Threat." The Nuclear Regulatory Commission claims that safety was never compromised at the infamous Davis-Besse nuclear power plant last January, but it has also admitted that the so-called Slammer worm was responsible for shutting down"a safety parameter display system and the plant process computer." The plant was already in cold shutdown mode at the time, however, so the worm did not actually cause a shutdown of the reactor itself.
Still, the plant's computer network was affected. Under actual operating conditions, things might have been different. Here's what we have learned from a knowledgeable correspondent:
The Safety Parameter Display System (SPDS) is used for plant monitoring only. It has no control function and is not required for operation of the plant. As a matter of fact, the plant was in a cold shutdown condition when the SPDS system was inoperable. Therefore, the worm did not shut the plant down. Obviously, somebody made a terrible choice to use M$ software to support such a function. In the past, the SPDS typically ran on high end mini-computers such as DEC, IBM, or Sun systems running proven and well tested operating systems.
The Davis-Besse plant is operated by FirstEnergy, the same company whose computers were unable to monitor transmission line problems that are thought to have initiated the recent Northeast blackout. In the case of the January incident, it is now a matter of record that the plant had not installed the recommended Microsoft security patch designed to plug a hole in SQL Server 2000 software.
FirstEnergy is quoted in the article as promising to install additional "protective software" and to instruct employees to "be more diligent" about patches.
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