The Grid: The United States Suffered its First Cyber-attack on the Power Grid

For the first time, the United States suffered an attack on the power grid. According to a report released by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the strike created blind spots at a grid control center and at several small power generation sites in the Western United States.

The intrusion did not cause any blackouts; instead, the attack lasted for roughly five minutes and caused signal outages at the "low impact" control centers. Although the attack on March fifth was rather small...