Worm 'did not cause' US blackout

Human and computer failures were to blame for last year's power cut in North America, not the MSBlast worm, according to an investigation. A US and Canadian task force investigating the August 2003 blackout that cut power to an estimated 50 million North Americans published its final report on Monday, finding that institutional, human and computer failures -- not the MSBlast worm -- led to the outage. The 14 August blackout hit three days after the worm started spreading, leading many to speculate that the quickly propagating program caused or contributed to the cascading failures that ultimately darkened New York, Toronto, Detroit and other areas.

Although several computer systems failed -- in particular, a server and backup that ran software for keeping track of the status of a major power network -- the Security Working Group leg of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)'s US-Canada Power System Outage Task Force "found no evidence that malicious actors caused or contributed to the power outage, nor is there evidence that worms or viruses circulating the Internet at the time of the power outage had an effect on power generation and delivery systems of the companies directly involved in the power outage," the report said.

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