The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is examining a report by a Chinese researcher who used publicly available data to show how cyber terrorists could attack and disable the power grid along the West Coast.

"At this point, our command and control folks are looking into the report and making every effort to protect the nation's power grid infrastructure," DHS spokesman John Verrico told internetnews.com. "Right now I can tell you we're in the process of rolling out new technology that addresses this threat."

The report by Jian-Wei Wang, a network analyst at China's Dalian University of Technology, outlines how a technology-assisted attack on just one sub network supporting the power grid could have a devastating impact on the entire West Coast. It looks at how one outage could cascade and trigger failures in adjacent networks that become overloaded.

The massive blackouts in the Northeast in the summer of 2003 were the result of cascading failures.

The Wall Street Journal reported in April that cyberspies had penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system. The newspaper attributed its report to current and former national-security officials, and said the spies came from China, Russia and other countries; the spies were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls.

The Obama administration is concerned about the threat to the power grid, and plans to invest up to $200 million on so-called smart grid technologies that can be better protected. The U.S. electrical grid comprises three separate electric networks, covering the East, the West and Texas. Each includes many thousands of miles of transmission lines, power plants and substations.

For more on protecting the electric grid:
- check out this internetnews.com article