Part three in a three part series about the history of the Jerry can; this page is a reprint of “The Little Can That Could” a first-person account to support parts one and two.
Written by Richard M. Daniel, retired commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve and a chemical engineer, and published in Fall 1987 Invention and Technology pages 60-64.
During World War II the United States exported more tons of petroleum products than of all other war matériel combined. The mainstay of the enormous oil and gasoline transportation network that fed the war was the oceangoing tanker, supplemented on land by pipelines, railroad tank cars, and trucks. But for combat vehicles on the move, another link was crucial—smaller containers that could be carried and poured by hand and moved around a battle zone by trucks.
Hitler knew this. He perceived early on that the weakest link in his plans for blitzkrieg using his panzer divisions was fuel supply. He ordered his staff to design a fuel container that would minimize gasoline losses under combat conditions. As a result the German army had thousands of jerrycans, as they came to be called, stored and ready when hostilities began in 1939.
The jerrycan had been developed under the strictest secrecy, and its unique features were many. It was flat-sided and rectangular in shape, consisting of two halves welded together as in a typical automobile gasoline tank. It had three handles, enabling one man to carry two cans and pass one to another man in bucket-brigade fashion. Its capacity was approximately five U.S. gallons; its weight filled, forty-five pounds. Thanks to an air chamber at the top, it would float on water if dropped overboard or from a plane. Its short spout was secured with a snap closure that could be propped open for pouring, making unnecessary any funnel or opener. A gasket made the mouth leakproof. An air-breathing tube from the spout to the air space kept the pouring smooth. And most important, the can’s inside was lined with an impervious plastic material developed for the insides of steel beer barrels. This enabled the jerrycan to be used alternately for gasoline and water.
Early in the summer of 1939, this secret weapon began a roundabout odyssey into American hands. An American engineer named Paul Pleiss, finishing up a manufacturing job in Berlin, persuaded a German colleague to join him on a vacation trip overland to India. The two bought an automobile chassis and built a body for it. As they prepared to leave on their journey, they realized that they had no provision for emergency water. The German engineer knew of and had access to thousands of jerrycans stored at Tempelhof Airport. He simply took three and mounted them on the underside of the car.
The two drove across eleven national borders without incident and were halfway across India when Field Marshal Goering sent a plane to take the German engineer back home. Before departing, the engineer compounded his treason by giving Pleiss complete specifications for the jerrycan’s manufacture. Pleiss continued on alone to Calcutta. Then he put the car in storage and returned to Philadelphia.
Back in the United States, Pleiss told military officials about the container, but without a sample can he could stir no interest, even though the war was now well under way. The risk involved in having the cans removed from the car and shipped from Calcutta seemed too great, so he eventually had the complete vehicle sent to him, via Turkey and the Cape of Good Hope. It arrived in New York in the summer of 1940 with the three jerrycans intact. Pleiss immediately sent one of the cans to Washington. The War Department looked at it but unwisely decided that an updated version of their World War I container would be good enough. That was a cylindrical ten-gallon can with two screw closures. It required a wrench and a funnel for pouring.
That one jerrycan in the Army’s possession was later sent to Camp Holabird, in Maryland. There it was poorly redesigned; the only features retained were the size, shape, and handles. The welded circumferential joint was replaced with rolled seams around the bottom and one side. Both a wrench and a funnel were required for its use. And it now had no lining. As any petroleum engineer knows, it is unsafe to store gasoline in a container with rolled seams. This ersatz can did not win wide acceptance.
The British first encountered the jerrycan during the German invasion of Norway, in 1940, and gave it its English name (the Germans were, of course, the “Jerries”). Later that year Pleiss was in London and was asked by British officers if he knew anything about the can’s design and manufacture. He ordered the second of his three jerrycans flown to London. Steps were taken to manufacture exact duplicates of it.
Two years later the United States was still oblivious of the can. Then, in September 1942, two quality-control officers posted to American refineries in the Mideast ran smack into the problems being created by ignoring the jerrycan. I was one of those two. Passing through Cairo two weeks before the start of the Battle of El Alamein, we learned that the British wanted no part of a planned U.S. Navy can; as far as they were concerned, the only container worth having was the Jerrycan, even though their only supply was those captured in battle. The British were bitter; two years after the invasion of Norway there was still no evidence that their government had done anything about the jerrycan.
My colleague and I learned quickly about the jerrycan’s advantages and the Allied can’s costly disadvantages, and we sent a cable to naval officals in Washington stating that 40 percent of all the gasoline sent to Egypt was being lost through spillage and evaporation. We added that a detailed report would follow. The 40 percent figure was actually a guess intended to provoke alarm, but it worked. A cable came back immediately requesting confirmation.
We then arranged a visit to several fuel-handling depots at the rear of Montgomery’s army and found there that conditions were indeed appalling. Fuel arrived by rail from the sea in fifty-five-gallon steel drums with rolled seams and friction-sealed metallic mouths. The drums were handled violently by local laborers. Many leaked. The next link in the chain was the infamous five-gallon “petrol tin.” This was a square can of tin plate that had been used for decades to supply lamp kerosene. It was hardly useful for gasoline. In the hot desert sun, it tended to swell up, burst at the seams, and leak. Since a funnel was needed for pouring, spillage was also a problem.
Allied soldiers in Africa knew that the only gasoline container worth having was German. Similar tins were carried on Liberator bombers in flight. They leaked out perhaps a third of the fuel they carried. Because of this, General Wavell’s defeat of the Italians in North Africa in 1940 had come to naught. His planes and combat vehicles had literally run out of gas. Likewise in 1941, General Auchinleck’s victory over Rommel had withered away. In 1942 General Montgomery saw to it that he had enough supplies, including gasoline, to whip Rommel in spite of terrific wastage. And he was helped by captured jerrycans.
The British historian Desmond Young later confirmed the great importance of oil cans in the early African part of the war. “No one who did not serve in the desert,” he wrote, “can realise to what extent the difference between complete and partial success rested on the simplest item of our equipment—and the worst. Whoever sent our troops into desert warfare with the [five-gallon] petrol tin has much to answer for. General Auchinleck estimates that this ‘flimsy and illconstructed container’ led to the loss of thirty per cent of petrol between base and consumer. … The overall loss was almost incalculable. To calculate the tanks destroyed, the number of men who were killed or went into captivity because of shortage of petrol at some crucial moment, the ships and merchant seamen lost in carrying it, would be quite impossible.”
After my colleague and I made our report, a new five-gallon container under consideration in Washington was canceled. Meanwhile the British were finally gearing up for mass production. Two million British jerrycans were sent to North Africa in early 1943, and by early 1944 they were being manufactured in the Middle East. Since the British had such a head start, the Allies agreed to let them produce all the cans needed for the invasion of Europe. Millions were ready by D-day. By V-E day some twenty-one million Allied jerrycans had been scattered all over Europe. President Roosevelt observed in November 1944, “Without these cans it would have been impossible for our armies to cut their way across France at a lightning pace which exceeded the German Blitz of 1940.”
In Washington little about the jerrycan appears in the official record. A military report says simply, “A sample of the jerry can was brought to the office of the Quartermaster General in the summer of 1940.”
Part three: Reprint of a first-person account called “The Little Can That Could“
Part four (bonus!): Why Charity Water Wells May Be Worse For Women Than Long Walks With Cans
Once upon a time I sailed half-way across the Pacific Ocean with the typical yellow fuel can lashed to the deck.
The yellow Jerry can has specific meaning to me — diesel fuel — which I thought was a standard. Yet recently I found a charity worker showing me yellow cans of… water with smiling children, as they asked me to donate funds.
Stock photos of happy smiling children, poor children, playing with yellow cans; this looked weird to me. I wanted to see charts of health and safety data from operations, not ignorance of toxicity from unsafe oil handling/disposal.
Flashy photos provided questionable value to me, or the opposite…made me curious about what might really be lurking beneath such shallow propaganda.
Is this really any different than children miners (minors) grinning through the toxicity of their forced labor environment?
After 1842, no child under the age of ten was allowed to work underground
Yellow cans in obviously staged photos seemed to be encouraging me to accept that children using them for water is some kind of acceptable normal. In fact the unsettling appearance of a fuel can in the hand of smiling children supposedly can be seen “everywhere”, as they have written without irony:
You’ve seen it everywhere on our site, at our events, on our shirts… tattooed on our arms… and although the Jerry can has become a mainstay for our staff and supporters, we want to let you know what it actually is and why it’s a symbol of the charity: water mission.
The diesel can a symbol of a water mission? “Our site, our events, our shirts, our arms”. Note the emphasis on “our” mainstay, rather than a mainstay of the people being helped. My definition of everywhere is a bit broader. Is this a mission to convince staff and supporters that a yellow can should become a symbol of water or that it already has? Because…why?
Something smelled funny. Globally I had learned in my travels, regardless of continent or sea, yellow cans meant one thing, and it was NOT water. Yellow often is used for warning signs; first-hand experience around the world has associated yellow cans with sickening slicks and fumes of poison.
Red gasoline cans, yellow diesel cans. Those are the ones you DO NOT DRINK from let alone touch and breathe. Often we would end up scrubbing and wiping the nearly permanent mess of petroleum around those cans.
And yet, because standards change, I still am open to be convinced otherwise if someone can show data.
Surely there are cases (no pun intended) where options are limited, and people have to make do with what little they have. Reuse of fuel cans for water? Sounds like an indicator of desperation or lack of regulation. Is this evidence of the need for many more white or blue cans?
Globally white and blue are used to symbolize health and safety (e.g. Blue Cross, Blue Shield, U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations blue hats and helmets, as well as the white helmets with blue suits of disaster relief workers)
Singapore disaster team prepares for Nepal. White helmets and blue suits (“clouds in the sky”) indicates neutral or safe. Yellow indicates warning or caution.
I mean we are talking about a charity here, where setting a new standard of good is supposed to be the mission, especially where health risks are found. For a charity with wealthy backers and industrial input the choices obviously are many, so the standard should be high. There is great risk in using charity to reinforce harmful behavior.
Confused by charity workers flashing smiling kids in your face to get your money? Me too.
How did someone decide, of all the options, to adopt yellow cans as a sign of health, a symbol for “clean” anything? And why are they just showing stock photos to get donations instead of any real data?
What comes next, bright red oil barrels for charity:meal?
Let’s forget I asked that…although to be fair red in this case could make sense to warn people about heat and to stay away from the barrels.
I searched for answers and some history on can safety. Either I would become convinced that it now is safe for people to drink from yellow cans, and it is safe to give this charity money, or that existing standards need to be defended and propaganda exposed.
My search led to some very interesting surprises.
The charity website reduced my confidence in their ability to collect and analyze data, for example. You might say my opinion worsened as I read through apologetic narratives about Nazi Germany.
Here are four examples, paragraph by paragraph, of what I found and why this charity is so wrong:
To most people, this simple metal or plastic can means ‘gasoline,’ and rightfully so — the first Jerry cans were introduced as gasoline containers by the German military at the start of World War II.
There was some kind of war, a second world war, and this military from Germany that had to go to war also had some need for gasoline, see…
False.
Jerry cans existed during the Spanish Civil War of 1936, years prior to the start of WWII. These cans served both as fuel and water containers, which we know because they were stamped with clear markings for their purpose.
Germany was involved with and supported other fascist militarism. Someone within the growing Nazi war machine was looking at how to improve a fuel can long before Hitler mobilized troops on 15 March 1938 (passive capitulation of Czechoslovakia) or 1 September 1939 (1.5 million marched into Poland, conquering 140 miles in just one week).
I believe the real story goes to lessons in vehicle support and supply containers (e.g. evaporation/expansion) derived from Italian invasion (3 October 1935) of Ethiopia and there is evidence cans were modified and tested during Nazi support for fascists in the Spanish Civil War (17 July 1936).
Handling chemicals in extreme conditions had forced Italy and Spain to innovate their cannister technology. For example the Italians had developed new mustard gas and new bombs to drop on hospitals and ambulances flying the red cross (infamously killing Swedish medical leaders Fride Hylander and Gunnar Lundström).
December 1935 Dolo Ethiopia Italian Bombing Killed Dr Lundstrum in Ambulance
This day is still called “darkest in the history of the International Red Cross“; worth reading if you want to get a sense of how in 1936 a rapidly expanding fascist offensive led to a quickening pace of technology change.
Does the can mean gasoline? The phrase “to most people” used by this charity indicates they have some kind of data or source to check, yet none is provided.
I would say to most people the Jerry can means more than gasoline. It means a variety of fuels and even water. My data on this is based on search engines where the top results are “Jerry Cans – Fuel, Water, Diesel, & Accessories” and “can be used for fuel and drinking water”. The word gasoline does not come up easily.
It is true that 1930s Germany used gasoline for their vehicles. However even they stamped their fuel cans with the generic word Kraftstoff (fuel) or with Wasser (water). The Wasser cans also were painted with broad white lines to ensure it could not be confused with Kraftstoff.
This says to me that today’s use of yellow color on a can would, like the Nazis originally intended, help differentiate unsafe fuel cans. Here is what a Nazi water can, stamped with Wasser and painted with white lines, looks like:
So to most people I think it fair to say the Jerry can means various liquids, not simply gasoline, and most people expect consistent symbols and use to avoid mixing them.
Moving everyone to think of yellow as safe for water seems doable, although expensive and risky, as it really has to be clear where diesel and water are to be found. It seems like a lot of extra work/cost because of confusion, as a friend recently put it:
Whoever made the almond-milk carton the exact same shape as the chicken-broth carton should have to eat this cereal.
Labeling/testing yellow Jerry cans on a massive scale as safe for water seems much, much more complicated and risky than just continuing to use the existing standard of white or blue water cans.
These five-gallon cans, also called ‘Jeep cans’ or ‘blitz cans’ (or, in Germany, ‘Wehrmachtskanisters’) were made of steel and usually sat in the back of vehicles as a reserve tank of gas.
In Germany there were these things with a funny German name in the back of vehicles, kind of like a Jeep, used for an afternoon blitz…
Misleading.
Wehrmachtkanisters means “army can”. Fascists who initiated war without provocation strapped multiples of cans to the side of their vehicles during invasions of foreign countries. In theory the blitzkrieg (German for “lightning war”) was a strategy of very brutal and fast advances to rout an enemy before they could respond.
Obviously there is less surface area in back (width versus length of a vehicle) so lashing cans to the sides has many advantages: leaves space available and makes use of open spaces, balances weight more evenly, while keeping nasty toxic fuel away from doors, passengers and gear. Use of the sides also means the back can be used for less durable/convenient assets and for giant doors and loading (e.g. troop deployment from trucks).
You may notice the white broad lines on some cans, clearly indicating Wasser instead of Kraftstoff.
You will find the same behavior on a boat that has to cross an ocean, as you saw at the start of this story. Reserve cans are balanced on either side, not in the back. It would be stupid to weigh down the back of a vehicle/boat with a dozen cans when sides are empty.
Now lets talk about gallons. Jerry cans are 20L capacity and stamped with this unit — about 5.28 US gallons or 4.40 UK gallons. Jerry cans were not “5 gallons” as Charity:water seems to believe. I find it very odd an international organization would use gallons, let alone not specify a system of gallons. Liters are the original and obvious measurement. Someone thinking in gallons has imposed a very narrow and inaccurate perspective over reality.
In terms of material the cans were not only steel; what made Jerry cans most notable in terms of material was a synthetic lining unlike other metal cans. Plastic cans, or even kevlar-lined battle containment for fuels, today could perhaps be linked to the synthetics of the Jerry can.
In terms of brand association, Jerry cans weren’t used by Jeeps until many years later. I am not sure why Jeep gets brought in so subtly next to “blitz cans”. It strangely brands a pre-existing can with a trademark of a specific American vehicle despite the cans not being developed for it originally and being used much more widely. Perhaps Charity:water is thinking ahead about the power of branding and hopes someday we’ll call them Charity:cans?
Speaking of American trademarks, “Blitz” reminds me of a sad and strange twist in history. As I explained above the word means lightning in German; a military campaign tactic attributed to the Nazis. It also refers to a specific 1940 bombing campaign meant to demoralize the British by killing civilians and destroying industry. Not the best connotations. With that in mind an American manufacturing company made the odd decision to adopt it as a name for their “improved” version of Jerry cans.
Originally a US metal container company that made Jerry cans in the 1940s used the words “metal container” in their name. They grew so large and successful that 50 years later the vast majority of American fuel cans were made at this “U.S. Metal Container” (UMC) company. When UMC moved its production away from metal to making only plastic cans in the 1990s they changed their name.
Instead of just switching to the acronym UMC, which would have been clever and celebrating American military history, they adopted the infamous Nazi term “Blitz” as their name because, well, UMC was located in Oklahoma. It should be no secret that neo-nazis and Hitler apologists lived an open life in Oklahoma. But I digress…
Anyhow after changing its name to the Nazi “Blitz” and moving everything to plastic production this venerable Jerry can manufacturer (that perhaps even helped defeat Nazi Germany) soon filed for bankruptcy.
“Blitz” said it could not survive the dozens of lawsuits over its defective cans that were exploding and killing Americans. I told you there was a twist.
It’s said that Adolph Hitler anticipated the biggest challenge to taking over Europe in WWII was fuel supply. So Germany stocked up.
False and super annoying.
Look, this is very wrong for many reasons. I don’t expect to read charitable thoughts on Hitler from a supposed “charity” site. WTF. No really, WTF.
Also I find “it’s said” to be an unacceptable start to a pro-Hitler sentence that lacks any citation. Who said Hitler anticipated…what? Hitler was an insane dictator and deserves no glorifications. I should not need to cover this.
At the outbreak of the war, Germany’s stockpiles of fuel consisted of a total of 15 million barrels.
That is basically nothing, given their rate of consumption, and fuel was expected to run out by 1941. Two years after starting the war, stupid Hitler lacked a plan to continue supplying fuel. Cans clearly were not meant to solve the macro challenge. The American pro-fascist company Standard Oil played an essential role in illegally supplying fuel to Hitler’s air-force even as it was bombing London, which arguably had far greater impact than any container holding that fuel.
Actually I’m getting ahead of myself. Assuming a rapid assault that would last only a few weeks or months then yes, perhaps, a large stock of cans would be decisive in lieu of actual fuel supplies. However, anyone anticipating the “biggest challenge” would have probably considered campaigns getting bogged-down or stuck and contemplate future fuel origination options beyond a better container to move it around in.
It makes far more sense to me that some middling Nazi official was eager to solve a small and obvious part of logistics that they were focused on. There was a little fuel distribution problem, they saw it in 1935 or 1936 fascist invasions, and they set about a new can design. Even translating that into a massive pile or distribution of their cans does not equate to truly anticipating the major issues ahead.
I mean of course fuel did not pose the “biggest challenge” to taking over Europe.
This claim is so absurd I don’t even know where to begin. Put it in reverse perspective: having solved fuel supply alone would not have won the war for the Axis. It was not the single deciding factor. It was a factor among many, with the other factors often being far more in focus and difficult.
A Hitler “anticipation” theory simply does not fit with one of the greatest fuel blunders of all time, Operation Barbarossa, to violate borders to the East. Consider that in this operation alone more than 600,000 Nazi horses were relied upon in 1941. That’s because a full 75 percent of the German Army relied on horses for transport in WWII.
There were absurd Nazi problems from lack of standardization, split and confused leadership and unrealistic (arguably insane) ideas of a “lightning” fast victory that quickly undermined an overstretched and flimsy supply chain doctrine. And this was after the 1940 “Blitz” against London already had failed its objectives despite America’s Standard Oil constantly re-fueling the bombers.
Thus, Nazi leadership represents forever the exact opposite of anticipation and stocking up early. Blitz really translates into blundering into something without a plan and then committing suicide to avoid accountability. (See example two, above)
As Germany moved through Europe and North Africa, so did their thousands of gasoline cans. These cans proved to be dependable and durable; soon, countries all over the world were adapting them to haul and store liquids, coining them ‘Jerry cans’ because of their German origin (‘Jerry’ was a snide name for a German WWII soldier). New water container designs emerged but nothing could top the strength and simplicity of the original rectangular, X-marked Jerry can.
False.
Obviously there were more than thousands of cans. The discovery of the Jerry can did not lead directly to adoption by the Allies. I sense some odd reverence for Nazis, even to the point of trying to apologize for “snide” names. Snide? Is this a concern without context? War against fascism, let alone against genocide, perhaps invites derision?
“Jerry” actually was a term used by Allies during WWI supposedly because the German helmet resembled a British jerry (chamber pot). In that sense a Jerry can is actually still a reference to its contents being toxic or at least unpotable.
As far as “new water container” designs I must again point out the original Jerry can also was used for water, with a designated stamp on the can to differentiate from fuel cans as mentioned above.
So with all that nonsense from Charity:water set aside, let me turn to an actual history of the yellow Jerry can. This is perhaps how I would update their page.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A REVISED TEXT
Jerry cans improved greatly upon prior cans, yet are quite simple in retrospect — better durability and portability. This can be explained with a couple short stories from the Allied perspective on winning WWII.
Durability
Paul Pleiss was an American engineer in Berlin who in 1936 had discovered a new can while planning to take a huge road trip (see part three of this series). He quickly realized its benefits first-hand. After his road trip, Pleiss spent the summer of 1939 to the summer of 1940 trying to convince the US military to adopt a new can.
American leadership was reluctant, without evidence or proof; they saw no need to alter current production. Only after Pleiss brought a can to show in person and demonstrate, and after the US considered field reports and shortcomings in their North Africa campaign (similar to the experiences of Italy during the 1935 invasion of Ethiopia) did the Jerry can come into better reception.
Things really shifted in 1942 when field qualitative reports backed by quantitative evidence showed US leaders that nearly half of fuel in Egypt was lost due to can failure. Despite sizable impacts while destroying fascists and freeing Africa, as recorded in desert battle outcomes in the preceding years (i.e. Wavell 1940, Auchinleck 1941, Montgomery 1942), measured data is what really hit home for the Americans.
…we sent a cable to naval officials in Washington stating that 40 percent of all the gasoline sent to Egypt was being lost through spillage and evaporation. We added that a detailed report would follow. The 40 percent figure was actually a guess intended to provoke alarm, but it worked. A cable came back immediately requesting confirmation.
So six years after Italy’s campaign in Ethiopia had led to German army equipment design changes, the US reached the same conclusions — fighting in North Africa needs a good fuel can.
Portability
The British appear to have ignored can design during the 1936-1939 innovation period. At the start of WWII hostilities a “flimsy” can prone to failure and mess was the UK standard. Still a better Jerry can design only came to light for them in the aftermath of French General Gamelin troops withering in 1940, leaving Britain alone to fight the Germans.
An over-extended and fragile but fast German blitzkreig had led to more careful British study and eventual realization that fuel portability had surely impacted performance. Another example, a similar study of the impact of new technology, was the use of radios by German tanks to update plans with “agile” development (peer communication) instead of waterfall (from the top).
The better containers meant much faster deployments. For example a can with a single handle is inferior to multiple handles when considering a line of soldiers trying to “bucket brigade”. Side handles meant two people could grab a can at the same time, or a single person could grab two with one hand. Faster can opening times mattered, as did less spillage during fuel transfer.
The German designer
Put the British and American realizations together and you get what I believe to have been the same thing that happened to the Germans in November 1936. An Italian invasion into northern Africa sparked the need for improvement, which then was tested during war in Spain.
Someone in Nazi Germany’s military administration invited Vinzenz Grünvogel of Müller to apply for a “Wehrmachtskanister” contract. Given the prior work of Müller with Ambi-Budd Presswerk (German for “pressed metal manufacturing”) the Jerry can method of manufacture probably was a derivative more than a novelty.
So it was with the 1936 Italian vehicles crossing rough African territory in mind that led to these specifications:
Portability
465mm tall
340mm wide
20L capacity
4kg dry weight
easy to stack
easy to manufacture (two plates pressed)
easy to carry (one soldier = two full, four empty) +
(two soldiers = three for bucket brigade speed of transfer)
Durability
shock (recessed welds)
corrosion (synthetic lining)
float (air pocket “bump”)
pour (short spout)
seal (cam with lock)
expand (50deg max)
From the list and field experience it should be easy to see why the design has lasted.
Ultimately the cans were manufactured by dozens of companies subjected to Axis rule (Müller, Presswerke, Metalwerk, Nowack, Fischer, Schwelm, etc) and after 1942 by many other companies.
Symbols and markings
Lets go back to the idea of keeping people safe from toxic contents. As I mentioned the Germans stamped cans with “Wasser” (water) or “Kraftstoff” (fuel).
Despite a stamping process there also can be found a white W to indicate “winter” fuel (Winterkraftstoff) on later cans. This reiterates the importance of clear labeling to the original designers. It also points again to a lack of overall planning and preparation mentioned above (Hitler apparently refused to believe war would last into winter).
And that brings us to the creation of the yellow Jerry cans, a warning color for fuel. How should cans with different contents safely be identified? Is there a standard?
The answer is yes and no. Standards tend to evolve. Generally they have run something like this.
Traditional
Gasoline – Red
Diesel – Yellow
Drinking water (potable) – White
Alt Fuels (Kerosene, JP Jet Fuel, Heli, M1 Meth, etc) – Blue
Does red look better with your shoes than green? Should we use colors for fashion sense not functional safety because of toxic chemicals?
As far as I can tell standards of color were centered on safety and clarity. Charity:Water uses yellow cans because fashion, and probably convenience, not because of grounded concerns about health and finding the best solutions. I mean has anyone studied the impact of using the correct color cans for water versus reinforcing use of yellow cans? Definitely did not find that on the charity site.
A water charity adopting a yellow can makes about as much sense to me as saying people in need drinking contaminated water should keep doing it because tradition. I’d just drop the color, if I were advising them. It is easy to switch a logo from solid yellow to white, especially since white cans conform to traditional safety standards.
Again, I want to be clear I am not opposed to change or redefinition of standards; here is a clever new white Jerry can:
My concern is with a charity pushing a global campaign that uses a dangerous/toxic liquid indicator as a symbol of clean water. Something seems odd about that decision.
Starting from my basic gut instinct it seems counter-productive to a charity objective to use confusing health/danger symbolism. This especially feels true for a charity that knows how to use imagery for power because they spend money to orchestrate images of smiling children. Moving to deeper analysis I found a very weak grasp of history, a whitewash of Hitler and the Nazis; this group asking for money may be seriously divorced from reality or real facts on the ground about social impact.
More on that…another day.
If you have made it this far (thanks!) you’re ready for a pop-quiz:
Given this typical image showing the various Jerry can colors…
…what word would you put after the word “charity”?
Feel free to put your answer in the comment section below.
Go back to part one or continue to part three in this series…
You may have heard a story about the Jerry can. Perhaps it goes something like Hitler was such a brilliant strategist that in 1936 he personally called forth an engineer to create a nearly perfect fuel can, which we still use to this day.
As a student of history I find this story nearly impossible to accept, not to mention as a humanist I find it a load of apologist nonsense about a genocidal maniac.
Why 1936, to begin with? Why did other countries take so long to follow? And how could Hitler’s grand supply-chain foresight three years before mobilizing for war with Poland fit into the many infamous Nazi fuel planning disasters that crippled the overall war effort?
No, Hitler wasn’t good at planning. No, Hitler wasn’t good at listening and adapting.
A more plausible story is that someone, probably a German soldier or mercenary assisting with Italian and Spanish fascist war campaigns in 1936, simply grew fed up with gas cans at a micro level. A WWI generation of fuel cans sucked for many reasons (couldn’t be stacked, leaked, couldn’t pour without a mess, couldn’t be carried in bulk).
I believe the archives should show this: from the summer to the fall of 1936, or maybe even earlier, German war management listened to field agents and decided something better was needed. Just like when the Nazis thought about putting radios in tanks for the first time, a decisive advantage in 1940, they also thought about motorized vehicle fuel supply.
It’s very likely some German soldier hated the inefficiency of the prior cans and borrowed or collaborated with Italian and Spanish fascists to find a better one. I see no evidence this can was meant to be a macro strategy for fuel supply management and plenty of evidence that Nazi fuel supply management overall was a disaster. The fact that a better can later was instrumental in battle outcomes was a reflection of grounded principles, not strategic thought.
And so an engineer won a Nazi contract to design a better can on some rather obvious theory of improving durability and portability to increase availability of fuel. Quality of engineering and manufacturing still was high in Germany at that time, despite emigrations and arrests of talent; so the Jerry can was born from a pressed metal factory preparing the Nazi war machine.
Some suggest the can was a military secret. Of course 1936 was full of secrecy to help with propaganda hiding the re-militarization. Hitler was a pathological liar who ran misinformation campaigns, playing a victim card over and over again, making technology secrecy essential. This was a factor.
Even more of a factor was a reluctance of Allies to listen to their field and incorporate feedback. Sending Sherman tanks into battle was an abject lesson in fail-faster because high casualties. Wasted fuel was harder to quantify. Unlike the Japanese however the Americans did adjust if they could see the need or advantage.
It turns out the Jerry can was discovered in 1939 by an American, even before hostilities, due to use at the Berlin airport (a German stole three and shared the technology). The delay in adoption by the Allies is related to their blindness to its value.
It took another four years because leadership of the Allies relied on statistical analysis and probably needed reports formatted with quantitative methods to make a change.
In 1942 an Allied soldier-chemist working on fuel logistics in northern Africa (e.g. facing similar things that soldiers in the Italian campaign of 1936 might have seen) converted qualitative field reports (e.g. old cans suck) into a statistics-based cable to Washington (e.g. we’re losing 40% of fuel before it even gets to the vehicle).
The lesson here is listening to qualitative field reports can inspire innovation in design, and quantitative analysis can show how small and simple changes in efficiency can make a major difference.
I am all ears if someone can find a memo from Hitler calling for a better fuel can and reasons to stockpile. It sounds a lot like revisionist theory to me, as if someone years from now would try to argue that President Obama anticipated social media growth and commissioned Facebook.
My guess based on data is an improved fuel containment design derived as a logical step from soldiers watching their losses during Spanish, Italian and Japanese fascist aggression.
Continue to part two or skip to three in this series…
This Genius site offers the sort of experience where you have to believe a ton of pop-up scripts and cartoonish-bubbles are some kind of improvement over plain text threads, such as the one I will now plainly write below. As an old New Yorker cartoon put it…
I thought he was a genius, but now I find out he was self-proclaimed.
Frankly, I don’t understand the value proposition of the “genius” in proprietary markups and voting.
So I’m re-posting my comments here in a more traditional text thread format, dropping the sticky-notes hovering over a story… not least of all because this is just easier for me to read and reference later.
Thinking about the intent of Genius — if there were an interactive interface I would rather see — the power of link-analysis and social data should be put into a 3D rotating text broken into paragraphs connected by lines from sources that you can spin through in 32-bit greyscale…just kidding.
But seriously if I have to click on every paragraph of text just to read it…something more innovative might be in order, more than highlights and replies. Let me know using the “non-genius boxes” (comment section) below if you have any thoughts on a platform you prefer.
Also I suppose I should introduce my bias before I begin this out-take of Genius (my text-based interpretation of their notation system masquerading as a panel discussion):
During the 2008 pipeline explosion I was developing critical infrastructure protection (CIP) tools to help organizations achieve reliability standards of the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC). I’ve been hands-on since the mid-1990s in pen-tests and security architecture reviews for energy companies. I studied these events extensively at the time and after, and behind the scenes debriefed high-level people who spoke with media. I may not have had a PR campaign for myself or made public appearances on this before now, yet I still think that makes me someone “familiar with events”. Never sure what journalists mean by that phrase.
Bloomberg: Countries have been laying the groundwork for cyberwar operations for years, and companies have been hit recently with digital broadsides bearing hallmarks of government sponsorship.
Thomas Rid: Let’s try to be precise here — and not lump together espionage (exfiltrating data); wiping attacks (damaging data); and physical attacks (damaging hardware, mostly ICS-run). There are very different dynamics at play.
Me: Agree. Would prefer not to treat every disaster as an act of war. In the world of IT the boundary between operational issues and security events (especially because software bugs are so frequent) tends to be very fuzzy. When security want to investigate and treat every event as a possible attack it tends to have the effect of 1) shutting down/slowing commerce instead of helping protect it 2) reducing popularity and trust in security teams. Imagine a city full of roadblocks and checkpoints for traffic instead of streetlights and a police force that responds to accidents. Putting in place the former will have disastrous effects on commerce.
People use terms like sophisticated and advanced to spin up worry about great unknowns in security and a looming cyberwar. Those terms should be justified and defined carefully; otherwise basic operational oversights and lack of quality in engineering will turn into roadblock city.
Bloomberg: Sony Corp.’s network was raided by hackers believed to be aligned with North Korea, and sources have said JPMorgan Chase & Co. blamed an August assault on Russian cyberspies.
Thomas Rid: In mid-February the NYT (Sanger) reported that the JPMorgan investigation has not yielded conclusive evidence.
Mat Brown: Not sure if this is the one but here’s a recent Bits Blog post on the breach https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/bits/2014/12/23/daily-report-simple-flaw-allowed-jp-morgan-computer-breach/
Me: “FBI officially ruled out the Russian government as a culprit” and “The Russian government has been ruled out as sponsor” https://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/21/us-cybersecurity-jpmorgan-idUSKCN0IA01L20141021
Bloomberg: The Refahiye explosion occurred two years before Stuxnet, the computer worm that in 2010 crippled Iran’s nuclear-enrichment program, widely believed to have been deployed by Israel and the U.S.
Robert Lee: Sort of. The explosion of 2008 occurred two years before the world learned about Stuxnet. However, Stuxnet was known to have been in place years before 2010 and likely in development since around 2003-2005. Best estimates/public knowledge place Stuxnet at Natanz in 2006 or 2007.
Me: Robert is exactly right. Idaho National Labs held tests called “Aurora” (over-accelerating destroying a generator) on the morning of March 4, 2007. (https://muckrock.s3.amazonaws.com/foia_files/aurora.wmv)
By 2008 it became clear in congressional hearings that NERC had provided false information to a subcommittee in Congress on Aurora mitigation efforts by the electric sector. Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in particular was called vulnerable to exploit. Some called for a replacement of NERC. All before Stuxnet was “known”.
Bloomberg: National Security Agency experts had been warning the lines could be blown up from a distance, without the bother of conventional weapons. The attack was evidence other nations had the technology to wage a new kind of war, three current and former U.S. officials said.
Robert Lee: Again, three anonymous officials. Were these senior level officials that would have likely heard this kind of information in the form of PowerPoint briefings? Or were these analysts working this specific area? This report relies entirely on the evidence of “anonymous” officials and personnel. It does not seem like serious journalism.
Me: Agree. Would like to know who the experts were, given we also saw Russia dropping bombs five days later. The bombs after the fire kind of undermines the “without the bother” analysis.
Bloomberg: Stuxnet was discovered in 2010 and this was obviously deployed before that.
Robert Lee: I know and greatly like Chris Blask. But Jordan’s inclusion of his quote here in the story is odd. The timing aspect was brought up earlier and Chris did not have anything to do with this event. It appears to be an attempt to use Chris’ place in the community to add value to the anonymous sources. But Chris is just making an observation here about timing. And again, this was not deployed before Stuxnet — but Chris is right that it was done prior to the discovery of Stuxnet.
Me: Yes although I’ll disagree slightly. As Aurora tests by 2008 were in general news stories, and congress was debating TVA insecurity and NERC ability to honestly report risk, Stuxnet was framed to be more unique and notable that it should have been.
Bloomberg: U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Russian government was behind the Refahiye explosion, according to two of the people briefed on the investigation.
Robert Lee: It’s not accurate to say that “U.S. intelligence agencies” believe something and then source two anonymous individuals. Again, as someone that was in the U.S. Intelligence Community it consistently frustrates me to see people claiming that U.S. intelligence agencies believe things as if they were all tightly interwoven, sharing all intelligence, and believing the same things.
Additionally, these two individuals were “briefed on the investigation” meaning they had no first hand knowledge of it. Making them non-credible sources even if they weren’t anonymous.
Me: Also interesting to note the August 28, 2008 Corner House analysis of the explosion attributed it to Kurdish Rebels (PKK). Yet not even a mention here? https://www.eca-watch.org/problems/oil_gas_mining/btc/CornerHouse_re_ECGD_and%20BTC_26aug08.pdf
[NOTE: I’m definitely going to leverage Robert’s excellent nuance statements when talking about China. Too often the press will try to paint a unified political picture, despite social scientists working to parse and explain the many different perspectives inside an agency, let alone a government or a whole nation. Understanding facets means creating better controls and more rational policy.]
Bloomberg: Although as many as 60 hours of surveillance video were erased by the hackers…
Robert Lee: This is likely the most interesting piece. It is entirely plausible that the cameras were connected to the Internet. This would have been a viable way for the ‘hackers’ to enter the network. Segmentation in industrial control systems (especially older pipelines) is not common — so Internet accessible cameras could have given the intruders all the access they needed.
Me: I’m highly suspect of this fact from experience in the field. Video often is accidentally erased or disabled. Unless there is a verified chain of malicious destruction steps, it almost always is more likely to find surveillance video systems fragile, designed wrong or poorly run.
Bloomberg: …a single infrared camera not connected to the same network captured images of two men with laptop computers walking near the pipeline days before the explosion, according to one of the people, who has reviewed the video. The men wore black military-style uniforms without insignias, similar to the garb worn by special forces troops.
Robert Lee: This is where the story really seems to fall apart. If the hackers had full access to the network and were able to connect up to the alarms, erase the videos, etc. then what was the purpose of the two individuals? For what appears to be a highly covert operation the two individuals add an unnecessary amount of potential error. To be able to disable alerting and manipulate the process in an industrial control system you have to first understand it. This is what makes attacks so hard — you need engineering expertise AND you must understand that specific facility as they are all largely unique. If you already had all the information to do what this story is claiming — you wouldn’t have needed the two individuals to do anything. What’s worse, is that two men walking up in black jumpsuits or related type outfits in the middle of the night sounds more like engineers checking the pipeline than it does special forces. This happened “days before the explosion” which may be interesting but is hardly evidence of anything.
Me: TOTALLY AGREE. I will just add that earlier we were being told “blown up from a distance, without the bother of conventional weapons” and now we’re being told two people on the ground walking next to the pipeline. Not much distance there.
Bloomberg: “Given Russia’s strategic interest, there will always be the question of whether the country had a hand in it,” said Emily Stromquist, an energy analyst for Eurasia Group, a political risk firm based in Washington.
Robert Lee: Absolutely true. “Cyber” events do not happen in a vacuum. There is almost always geopolitical or economical interests at play.
Me: I’m holding off from any conclusion it’s a cyber event. And strategic interest to just Russia? That pipeline ran across how many conflict/war zones? There was much controversy during planning. In 2003 analysts warned that the PKK were highly likely to attack it. https://www.baku.org.uk/publications/concerns.pdf
Bloomberg: Eleven companies — including majority-owner BP, a subsidiary of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, Chevron Corp. and Norway’s Statoil ASA — built the line, which has carried more than two billion barrels of crude since opening in 2006.
Robert Lee: I have no idea how this is related to the infrared cameras. There is a lot of fluff entered into this article.
Me: This actually supports the argument that the pipeline was complicated both in politics and infrastructure, increasing risks. A better report would run through why BP planning would be less likely to result in disaster in this pipeline compared to their other disasters, especially given the complicated geopolitical risks.
Bloomberg: According to investigators, every mile was monitored by sensors. Pressure, oil flow and other critical indicators were fed to a central control room via a wireless monitoring system. In an extra measure, they were also sent by satellite.
Robert Lee: This would be correct. There is a massive amount of sensor and alert data that goes to any control center — pipelines especially — as safety is of chief importance and interruptions of even a few seconds in data can have horrible consequences.
Me: I believe it is more accurate to say every mile was designed to be monitored by sensors. We see quite clearly from investigations of the San Bruno, California disaster (killing at least 8 people) that documentation and monitoring of lines are imperfect even in the middle of an expensive American suburban neighborhood. https://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/30/local/la-me-0831-san-bruno-20110831
Bloomberg: The Turkish government’s claim of mechanical failure, on the other hand, was widely disputed in media reports.
Thomas Rid: A Wikileaks State Department cable refers to this event — by 20 August 2009, BP CEO Inglis was “absolutely confident” this was a terrorist attack caused by external physical force. I haven’t had the time to dig into this, but here’s the screenshot from the cable:
Thanks to @4Dgifts
Me: It may help to put it into context of regional conflict at that time. Turkey started Operation Sun (Güneş Harekatı) attacking the PKK, lasting into March or April. By May the PKK had claimed retaliation by blowing up a pipeline between Turkey and Iran, which shutdown gas exports for 5 days (https://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2008/May-27/75106-explosion-cuts-iran-turkey-gas-pipeline.ashx). We should at least answer why BTC would not be a follow-up event.
And there have been several explosions since then as well, although I have not seen anyone map all the disasters over time. Figure an energy market analyst must have done one already somewhere.
And then there’s the Turkish news version of events: “Turkish official confirms BTC pipeline blast is a terrorist act” https://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/finance/9660409.asp
Thomas Rid: Thanks — Very useful!
Bloomberg: “We have never experienced any kind of signal jamming attack or tampering on the communication lines, or computer systems,” Sagir said in an e-mail.
Robert Lee: This whole section seems to heavily dispute the assumption of this article. There isn’t really anything in the article presented to dispute this statement.
Me: Agree. The entire article goes to lengths to make a case using anonymous sources. Mr. Sagir is the best source so far and says there was no tampering detected. Going back to the surveillance cameras, perhaps they were accidentally erased or non-functioning due to error.
Bloomberg: The investigators — from Turkey, the U.K., Azerbaijan and other countries — went quietly about their business.
Robert Lee: This is extremely odd. There are not many companies who have serious experience with incident response in industrial control system scenarios. Largely because industrial control system digital forensics and incident response is so difficult. Traditional information technology networks have lots of sources of forensic data — operations technology (industrial control systems) generally do not.
The investigators coming from one team that works and has experience together adds value. The investigators coming from multiple countries sounds impressive but on the ground level actually introduces a lot of confusion and conflict as the teams have to learn to work together before they can even really get to work.
Me: Agree. The pipeline would see not only confusion in the aftermath, it also would find confusion in the setup and operation, increasing chance of error or disaster.
Bloomberg: As investigators followed the trail of the failed alarm system, they found the hackers’ point of entry was an unexpected one: the surveillance cameras themselves.
Robert Lee: How? This is a critical detail. As mentioned before, incident response in industrial control systems is extremely difficult. The Industrial Control System — Computer Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) has published documents in the past few years talking about the difficulty and basically asking the industry to help out. One chief problem is that control systems usually do not have any ability to perform logging. Even in the rare cases that they do — it is turned off because it uses too much storage. This is extremely common in pipelines. So “investigators” seem to have found something but it is nearly outside the realm of possible that it was out in the field. If they had any chance of finding anything it would have been on the Windows or Linux systems inside the control center itself. The problem here is that wouldn’t have been the data needed to prove a failed alarm system.
It is very likely the investigators found malware. That happens a lot. They likely figured the malware had to be linked to blast. This is a natural assumption but extremely flawed based on the nature of these systems and the likelihood of random malware to be inside of a network.
Me: Agree. Malware noticed after disaster becomes very suspicious. I’m most curious why anyone would setup surveillance cameras for “deep into the internal network” access. Typically cameras are a completely isolated/dedicated stack of equipment with just a browser interface or even dedicated monitors/screens. Strange architecture.
Bloomberg: The presence of the attackers at the site could mean the sabotage was a blended attack, using a combination of physical and digital techniques.
Robert Lee: A blended cyber-physical attack is something that scares a lot of people in the ICS community for good reason. It combines the best of two attack vectors. The problem in this story though is that apparently it was entirely unneeded. When a nation-state wants to spend resources and talents to do an operation — especially when they don’t want to get caught — they don’t say “let’s be fancy.” Operations are run in the “path of least resistance” kind of fashion. It keeps resource expenditures down and keeps the chance of being caught low. With everything discussed as the “central element of the attack” it was entirely unneeded to do a blended attack.
Me: What really chafes my analysis is that the story is trying to build a scary “entirely remote attack” scenario while simultaneously trying to explain why two people are walking around next to the pipeline.
Also agree attackers are like water looking for cracks. Path of least resistance.
Bloomberg: The super-high pressure may have been enough on its own to create the explosion, according to two of the people familiar with the incident.
Robert Lee: Another two anonymous sources.
Me: And “familiar with the incident” is a rather low bar.
Bloomberg: Having performed extensive reconnaissance on the computer network, the infiltrators tampered with the units used to send alerts about malfunctions and leaks back to the control room. The back-up satellite signals failed, which suggested to the investigators that the attackers used sophisticated jamming equipment, according to the people familiar with the probe.
Robert Lee: If the back-up satellite signal failed in addition to alerts not coming from the field (these units are polled every few seconds or minutes depending on the system) there would have been an immediate response from the personnel unless they were entirely incompetent or not present (in that case this story would be even less likely). But jamming satellite links is an even extra level of effort beyond hacking a network and understanding the process. If this was truly the work of Russian hackers they are not impressive for all the things they accomplished — they were embarrassingly bad at how many resources and methods they needed to accomplish this attack when they had multiple ways of accomplishing it with any one of the 3-4 attack vectors.
Me: Agree. The story reads to me like conventional attack, known to be used by PKK, causes fire. Then a series of problems in operations are blamed on super-sophisticated Russians. “All these systems not working are the fault of elite hackers”
Bloomberg: Investigators compared the time-stamp on the infrared image of the two people with laptops to data logs that showed the computer system had been probed by an outsider.
Robert Lee: “Probed by an outsider” reveals the system to be an Internet connected system. “Probes” is a common way to describe scans. Network scans against publicly accessible devices occur every second. There is a vast amount of research and public information on how often Internet scans take place (usually a system begins to be scanned within 3-4 seconds of being placed online). It would have been more difficult to find time-stamps in any image that did not correlate to probing.
Me: Also is there high trust in time-stamps? Accurate time is hard. Looking at the various scenarios (attackers had ability to tamper, operations did a poor job with systems) we should treat a time-stamp-based correlation as how reliable?
Bloomberg: Years later, BP claimed in documents filed in a legal dispute that it wasn’t able to meet shipping contracts after the blast due to “an act of terrorism.”
Robert Lee: Which makes sense due to the attribution the extremists claimed.
Me: I find this sentence mostly meaningless. My guess is BP was using legal or financial language because of the constraints in court. Would have to say terrorism, vandalism, etc. to speak appropriately given precedent. No lawyer wants to use a new term and establish new norms/harm when they can leverage existing work.
Bloomberg: A pipeline bombing may fit the profile of the PKK, which specializes in extortion, drug smuggling and assaults on foreign companies, said Didem Akyel Collinsworth, an Istanbul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group. But she said the PKK doesn’t have advanced hacking capabilities.
Robert Lee: This actually further disproves the article’s theory. If the PKK took credit, the company believed it to be them, the group does not possess hacking skills, and specialists believe this attack was entirely their style — then it was very likely not hacking related.
Me: Agree. Wish this pipeline explosion would be put in context of other similar regional explosions, threats from the PKK that they would attack pipelines and regional analyst warnings of PKK attacks.
Bloomberg: U.S. spy agencies probed the BTC blast independently, gathering information from foreign communications intercepts and other sources, according to one of the people familiar with the inquiry.
Robert Lee: I would hope so. There was a major explosion in a piece of critical infrastructure right before Russia invaded Georgia. If the intelligence agencies didn’t look into it they would be incompetent.
Me: Agree. Not only for defense, also for offense knowledge, right? Would be interesting if someone said they probed it differently than the other blasts, such as the one three months earlier between Turkey and Iran.
Bloomberg: American intelligence officials believe the PKK — which according to leaked State Department cables has received arms and intelligence from Russia — may have arranged in advance with the attackers to take credit, the person said.
Robert Lee: This is all according to one, yet again, anonymous source. It is extremely far fetched. If Russia was going to go through the trouble of doing a very advanced and covert cyber operation (back in 2008 when these types of operations were even less publicly known) it would be very out of character to inform an extremist group ahead of time.
Me: Agree, although also plausible to tell a group a pipeline would be blown up without divulging method. Then the group claims credit without knowing method. The disconnect I see is Russia trying to bomb the same pipeline five days later. Why go all conventional if you’ve owned the systems and can remotely do what you like?
Bloomberg: The U.S. was interested in more than just motive. The Pentagon at the time was assessing the cyber capabilities of potential rivals, as well as weaknesses in its own defenses. Since that attack, both Iran and China have hacked into U.S. pipeline companies and gas utilities, apparently to identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited later.
Robert Lee: The Pentagon is always worried about these types of things. President Clinton published PDD-63 in 1998 talking about these types of vulnerabilities and they have been assessing and researching at least since then. There is also no evidence provided about the Iranian and Chinese hacks claimed here. It’s not that these types of things don’t happen — they most certainly do — it’s that it’s not responsible or good practice to cite events because “we all know it’s happening” instead of actual evidence.
Me: Yes, explaining major disasters already happening and focus of congressional work (2008 TVA) would be a better perspective on this section. August 2003 was a sea change in bulk power risk assessment. Talking about Iran and China seems empty/idle speculation in comparison: https://www.nerc.com/pa/rrm/ea/Pages/Blackout-August-2003.aspx
Bloomberg: As tensions over the Ukraine crisis have mounted, Russian cyberspies have been detected planting malware in U.S. systems that deliver critical services like electricity and water, according to John Hultquist, senior manager for cyber espionage threat intelligence at Dallas-based iSight Partners, which first revealed the activity in October.
Robert Lee: It’s not that I doubt this statement, or John, but this is another bad trend in journalism. Using people that have a vested interest in these kind of stories for financial gain is a bad practice in the larger journalism community. iSight Partners offer cybersecurity services and specialize in threat intelligence. So to talk about ‘cyberspies’, ‘cyber espionage’, etc. is something they are financially motivated to hype up. I don’t doubt the credibility or validity of John’s statements but there’s a clear conflict of interest that shouldn’t be used in journalism especially when there are no named sources with first-hand knowledge on the event.
Me: Right! Great point Robert. Reads like free advertising for threat intelligence company X rather than trusted analysis. Would mind a lot less if a non-sales voice was presented with a dissenting view, or the journalist added in caution about the source being of a particular bias.
Also what’s the real value of this statement? As a crisis with Russia unfolds, we see Russia being more active/targeted. Ok, but what does this tell us about August 2008? No connection is made. Reader is left guessing.
Bloomberg: The keyboard was the better weapon.
Robert Lee: The entire article is focused on anonymous sources. In addition, the ‘central element of the attack’ was the computer intrusion which was analyzed by incident responders. Unfortunately, incident response in industrial control systems is at such a juvenile state that even if there were a lot of data, which there never is, it is hard to determine what it means. Attribution is difficult (look at the North Korea and Sony case where much more data was available including government level resources). This story just doesn’t line up.
When journalism reports on something it acknowledges would be history changing better information is needed. When those reports stand to increase hype and tension between nation-states in already politically tense times (Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, and the U.S.). Not including actual evidence is just irresponsible.
Me: Agree. It reads like a revision of history, so perhaps that’s why we’re meant to believe it’s “history changing.” I’m ready to see evidence of a hack yet after six years we have almost nothing to back up these claims. There is better detail about what happened from journalists writing at the time.
Also if we are to believe the conclusion that keyboards are the better weapon, why have two people walking along the pipeline and why bomb infrastructure afterwards? Would Russia send a letter after making a phone call? I mean if you look carefully at what Georgia DID NOT accuse Russia of it was hacking critical infrastructure.
Lack of detailed evidence, anonymous attribution, generic/theoretical vulnerability of infrastructure statements, no contextual explanations…there is little here to believe the risk was more than operational errors coupled with PKK targeted campaign against pipelines.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
