] Working with experts at the Lawrence Livermore National
] Laboratory, the FBI traced trails of a broader
] reconnaissance. A forensic summary of the investigation,
] prepared in the Defense Department, said the bureau found
] "multiple casings of sites" nationwide. Routed through
] telecommunications switches in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia
] and Pakistan, the visitors studied emergency telephone
] systems, electrical generation and transmission, water
] storage and distribution, nuclear power plants and gas
] facilities.

] "We were underestimating the amount of attention [al
] Qaeda was] paying to the Internet," said Roger Cressey,
] a longtime counterterrorism official who became chief of
] staff of the President's Critical Infrastructure
] Protection Board in October. "Now we know they see it as
] a potential attack vehicle. Al Qaeda spent more time
] mapping our vulnerabilities in cyberspace than we
] previously thought. An attack is a question of when,
] not if."

] What they do know is that "Red Teams" of mock intruders
] from the Energy Department's four national laboratories
] have devised what one government document listed as
] "eight scenarios for SCADA attack on an electrical power
] grid" -- and all of them work. Eighteen such exercises
] have been conducted to date against large regional
] utilities, and Richard A. Clarke, Bush's cyber-security
] adviser, said the intruders "have always, always succeeded."

What they do know is that "Red Teams" of mock intruders from the Energy Department's four national laboratories have devised what one government document listed as "eight scenarios for SCADA attack on an electrical power grid" -- and all of them work. Eighteen such exercises have been conducted to date against large regional utilities, and Richard A. Clarke, Bush's cyber-security adviser, said the intruders "have always, always succeeded."