Phase 2 (Months 3–4): Standards and threats

chill, uk spoken poetry, jazz, bass and piano, slow · 4:11

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Lyrics

[Verse 1 – Male]
Draw the fence around the turbine, call the fence a zone,
the wire that crosses over is a conduit, not alone.
Security levels, zero climbing up to four,
how hard the wall must be before the wolf gets through the door.

[Verse 2 – Female]
NERC CIP watches over the grid from coast to coast,
TSA holds the pipeline to a directive like a ghost.
Canadian Centre for Cyber tells the utilities plain:
patch what you can, watch what you can't, and never trust the chain.

[Chorus – Both]
Zones and conduits, levels standing guard,
IEC sixty-two four four three, the standard's not that hard —
NERC, TSA, the Centre keep the score,
say it with me: segment, monitor, restore.

[Verse 3 – Male]
Stuxnet crept through a thumb drive, centrifuge unaware,
spun the rotors past their limits, whispered numbers in the air.
The fix was air-gapped diligence, and code that's cryptic-signed —
a single flash drive toppled what the engineers designed.

[Verse 3B – Female]
Ukraine, twenty fifteen, phishing opened up the door,
breakers tripped by human hands through a hijacked SCADA floor.
Industroyer struck twenty-sixteen, protocol as blade —
role-based access, logged and locked, could've stopped the raid.

[Verse 4 – Male]
TRITON reached for safety systems, the last wall in the plant,
Colonial's billing servers fell, and fuel became a chant.
Segregate the business network from the valves that keep you fed —
that's the lesson written after Colonial went to bed.

[Verse 4B – Female]
Industroyer2, twenty twenty-two, came back for one more round,
same old breakers, same old grid, on Ukrainian ground.
Detection is the difference between a blackout and a save —
watch the wire, know the pattern, that's the standard, that's the stave.

[Chorus – Both]
Zones and conduits, levels standing guard,
IEC sixty-two four four three, the standard's not that hard —
NERC, TSA, the Centre keep the score,
say it with me: segment, monitor, restore.

[Bridge – Spoken/Sung, Female then Male]
In the lab tonight, we listen, we don't touch —
Zeek is watching Modbus, parsing every clutch.
An unauthorized write function, a coil flipped somewhere —
write the rule, raise the alarm, catch the ghost in the air.

[Bridge – Male]
Countdown to Zero Day, Zetter's warning in the wire,
Sandworm crawling networks, Greenberg's slow-burn fire.
Read them both like scripture, learn the names, remember why —
the grid don't fall from thunder, it falls from a phishing lie.

[Final Chorus – Both]
Zones and conduits, levels standing guard,
sixty-two four four three, memorize the card —
Stuxnet, Ukraine, TRITON, Colonial's dark day,
Industroyer twice — watch the wire, don't look away.

[Outro – Spoken, Female]
Segment. Monitor. Restore.
That's the whole curriculum, walking through the door.

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