Is Power Grid security being given up for convenience?

I live in an interesting area just outside of Washington DC. We have the suburbs that are old and established with the big beautiful oaks and then we have the growing suburbs that are sprouting out of old farm fields. The last few weeks have seen a rash of storms that have delivered devastating blows to the power supply at people's homes. Those in the newer suburbs have been less affected due to buried cable than those in the beautiful old neighborhoods where wire is still strung amongst those beautiful old oaks that tend to fall and take out the overhead infrastructure. Of course these storms are either summer thunderstorms, in this case, which happen during the hottest part of summer - so no power means no air conditioning in the DC heat. The other end of the spectrum is a nor'easter in February which takes out power when it is well below freezing. Welcome to living in the DC area.

Of course all of this has people talking about the power companies in terms of reliability and response.  Things like "How can a company not be prepared for this type of situation - people without power for a week" have been heard frequently over the last two weeks. Well I am not one to beat up a power company for nature unleashing its fury. Nature is unpredictable and when a storm does happen, as in this case, it can be a very large undertaking to get things coordinated to remove trees and then restring wires etc.

Where I do have an issue is when it comes to the things that they are doing which can be planned for over a long period of time. We have all seen recent articles on the hacking of the power grid in various magazines over the last few years. In c|net, Scientific American, and you can even go to YouTube to see a video on how to do it. Congress, the National Security Agency and others have highlighted the fact that we have this vulnerability. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been working with industry to develop a stronger set of security standards for the SmartGrid to try and build a better grid.

BUT .....

We still have people in the industry that appear to think that the problem is not that bad. The North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) authorizes two organizations to issue certificates for the Grid today - Open Access Technology International (OATI) and GlobalSign (Yes the same folks who had their website hacked earlier this year). Both OATI and GlobalSign feel it is OK to have long life certificates within the infrastructure protecting the power grid. In fact both have stated that 30 year certificate lifetimes are ok from a security perspective.

I myself find that amazing as the criticality of this infrastructure and its impact on Defense, Homeland Security and the economy is well recognized. This is an infrastructure you want to protect. Part of the argument is the difficulty in updating but then the OATI webCares CPS indicates an 8 year lifetime for Root certificates. Globalsign does allow 30 and 40 year Root certificates in its Certificate Policy and goes as far as 5 year for end devices. They also allow SHA1 hashed certificates, with a 2048 RSA key. There does seem to be some contradiction in the Globalsign CP in that it indicates following of NIST guidance but is not all that specific on which guidance. Certainly today NIST does not recommend use of SHA1 for any certificate use and long life certificates for Root CA's or any issuing CA is also not recommended due to the rapidly evolving attack vectors.

So what we are left with is two companies that seem to think that they can mitigate the risk of technology obsolescence. If we look at history we learn some very hard lessons. MD5 went from a suspected problem (1997) to a demonstrated attack in 8 years. Within 7 years of this first demonstrated attack (2005) there was a usable attack vector that allowed an attacker to introduce malware without the victim knowing and apparently not knowing for a couple of years. So yes one can replace their certificates if someone sees an attack against the CA or the technology that was being used but will that be too late? Will the logic bombs already be in place? If they are can we find them in time? If we do not what will happen? And what is being attacked, industrial control systems, have been targeted very recently due to existing vulnerabilities.

The risks are high here so rather than playing with convenience should NAESB not make it simple for all involved and strengthen these standards to reduce the risk? I would hope that if I asked the folks that went without air conditioning for a week in 100 degree heat if they would risk losing power again, and maybe for much longer, that they would react strongly. I wonder how people in hospitals and Wall Street would see things?