While the world is busy catching hackers and terrorists, a group of furry critters is disrupting the power grid. A new database, the Cyber Squirrel 1, maps over 600 incidents worldwide where squirrels have wreaked some havoc by chewing through power cables and making homes in electricity boxes.
On the website, viewers can check out unclassified Cyber Squirrel Operations that have been released to the public and also track outages by other animals such as birds and raccoons.
“I don’t think paralysis (of the electrical grid) is more likely by cyber attack than by natural disaster. And frankly the number one threat experienced to date by the US electrical grid is squirrels,” said John C. Inglis, Former Deputy Director, National Security U.S., according to Cyber Squirrel 1.
The most recent incident occurred just a few weeks ago on January 2nd in Oklahoma when a squirrel touched grounded wire at an electrical substation and shut down the power for some of the town for five hours.
According to Cyber Squirrel’s data, there were 137 squirrel-related power outages in last year, but the site notes that this is probably a conservative estimate.
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