I'm not entirely anti-Microsoft (admittedly, I am primarily a Knoppix/Debian Linux user), but this German article makes an interesting point. There is at least a possibility that the MS Blaster worm may have indirectly caused the Lake Erie Loop blackout. Using Babelfish http://Babelfish.altavista.com and picking through the Germlish got me enough of a translation that I must say that it's food for thought:

http://heise.de/newsticker/data/ju-15.08.03-001

Here's a link to the BugTraq message thread concerning RPC/DCOM controls as used by the utilities:

http://www.securityfocus.com/archive...4/2003-08-20/1

...and this AP story may well be the smoking gun -- was the alarm knocked out by the worm, or did the alarm being out allow the worm to bring the system down?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...d=519&ncid=716

Quite interesting. I, too, used babelfish to do some translating but still could only barely make out the story. I didn't really have a lot of time to look at it though. Perhaps I'll take a second glance later. Thanks for the scoop!

that aritcle is pretty interesting. it kind of makes sense. we will probably find out more down the road.