A water plant cpu in the midwest!,Yikes!,anyone else heard about this? I just heard it on a radio news flash,I don't know any details...scary!

http://en.rian.ru/...d/20111119/168837406.html

They did some damage,its all over the news this morning,wow,let's see what happens next!

This could happen every day anywhere in America and by anyone on the planet.

I like to think that it doesn't happen daily because IT security in general is good to excellent.

I'm afraid it's because we're just lucky or that there aren't enough smart and malicious people in the world.

I know this isn't game-relevant, but 30 years ago when I graduated college with a engineering degree, I went to work for a telecom company installing brad new technology. Digital Central Offices.

This was telephone switching gear that phone companies used to supply telephone service to residents, businesses and emergency services in the smallest towns and largest cities in America.

Prior to the Digital Revolution, telephone companies used ad maintained equipment that was electromechanical to provide all of us phone service.

Without getting too far into Digital Telephony versus "old school" Telephony, I wondered about and was very afraid of the vulnerability of this emerging technology I was installing. This was also at the time of the birth of Fiber Optic technology. I was on the leading edge of this stuff and was among the first in the world to install it and put it into service.

I was afraid then in 1982 and THAT was well before everything was interconnected via the Internet. Back in 1982, It would have taken the detonation of an EMP weapon to bring National Phone Service to its knees, and even then, most Telephone companies still had their electromechanical equipment in place as a backup.

Fast forward 30 years to today. The level of vulnerability of our ENTIRE infrastructure from communications, to power, to energy to water supply, transportation and too many other things to name frightens me to no end because I KNOW we have little to no backup in the event that some gifted hackers shut our asses down.

We spend a LOT of money every year on "cyber defense" and have Law Enforcement agencies to track down and prosecute cyber terrorists, but let me ask you this... When America as a nation is crushed by hackers even for, say, a month, of what value is it that the Cybercops caught the Bad Guys? fluffing precious little.

Generally speaking, we have become so reliant on Technology that we have abandoned the "old school backup". I hope that doesn't fluff us some day, but I'm very afraid it will. One person out of 7 BILLION can now do what would have required WWIII to do 30 years ago. I try not to think about it. I need my sleep at night.

back in eighty two i wasn't even alive, dragon :P

but yes, this worries me as well- with all of the money we have in north america, and the standard of living we're so accustomed to, i find it ridiculous that russia and china and north korea can kick our ass in that sense :(

ok

You can thank Bill Clinton for this,he sold all that tech to the Chinese back in the 90's

Who cares...It was not FB...

The biggest "sin" that America will be guilty of is that we don't have nationwide redundancy like we did 30 years ago.

Can anyone rationally explain to me exactly HOW Russian hackers (or anyone else) could get into the control network of an Illinois water pumping station and trash a pump and reduce water supply as a result?

What fluffing MORONS expose such essential infrastructure to the God Damn Internet? Sometimes, we are as STUPID as the Bad Guys are BAD.

There are far more frightening infrastructure networks out there that are exposed to attack on a daily basis because a bunch of morons decided that it is okay to expose our vulnerabilities to the World Wide Web.

Idiots hold our fate in their hands.

*high fives Dragon* well said! IMO,none of the vital parts of our nation should even have internet access! No internet access=no hacker threat,is it too much to ask you drive there and manually push buttons? Is that sooooo hard that you need internet access so you can do it from home????

I blaim the Democrats.

sounds like a simple case of unauthorized people being granted access to the system. why should the software company be given remote access to the systems just for debugging?

no internet access would make it more difficult to automatically update stuff.

tell them to quit watching porn at work.

Wow just wow, you people really have such equipment contected to the web? Don't blame the hackers, blame the idiots.


Getting hacked is only possible if you make it possible.

Also this could very well be a ruse to help pass the internet censorship crap... Wouldn't be the first time USA attacks USA, in order to get the people's minds washed... And I am talking about the very real and proven "sunken lusitania" crap of WWI... As everything else isn't clear as day to most Americans.

america bombed pearl harbor, and put their own nukes in cuba to heat up the cold war a little.

cheaper to replace the pump than pay some union member to sit there whacking off waiting for somebody to call and tell them it's time to push a button.
could probably fake the call anyway and get them to screw up the equipment.

water pump controls hooked to the net.... not wise.

O.o

now you are talking off your arse

but I won't fight over past history as history never is as simple as you would think, however, if this attack (and maybe other types of attacks) end up boosting the Internet Censorship Bill, then you better think long and hard about who are the ones hogging the profits of this.

"Secure" offline private networks, seriously? *coughStuxnetcough*

Oh btw, check out what the Chinese managed to do to NASA...nothing really but the fact that they succeeded in gaining access is mindblowing :P

http://www.geek.com/...-for-11-minutes-20111119/

No. The U.S. put nukes in Turkey... right next door to the U.S.S.R., the Soviets responded by putting nukes in Cuba, not more than 70 miles from the U.S., that's what the whole Cuban Missile Crisis was all about.