Cyberwar- a foretaste
It is more than unfortunate that the general populace is sadly deficient in technological knowledge. It is a danger to our society. It isn’t just that sophisticated criminals are after our money. Future foreign enemies are going to try to exploit the weaknesses in the security of our infrastructure to create wholesale breakdowns of vital systems. Those weaknesses are there in part because so many people do not understand the problems of using technology. An example of what future enemies might do is reported at InformationWeek:
The CIA on Friday admitted that cyberattacks have caused at least one power outage affecting multiple cities outside the United States.
Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, said that CIA senior analyst Tom Donahue confirmed that online attackers had caused at least one blackout. The disclosure was made at a New Orleans security conference Friday attended by international government officials, engineers, and security managers from North American energy companies and utilities.Paller said that Donahue presented him with a written statement that read, “We have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands. We suspect, but cannot confirm, that some of these attackers had the benefit of inside knowledge. We have information that cyberattacks have been used to disrupt power equipment in several regions outside the United States. In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities. We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet.”
Our communications systems, our electrical grid, nuclear power stations, water systems, transportation systems, banking system- you name it- all are potential targets of cyberwar or cyberterrorists. It may or may not be true but there are repeated reports that the Chinese government has a program of continually trying to hack into our military and government networks. I see no reason why it should not be true since it makes perfectly good sense for them to do so. We have already seen an example of an entire nation under attack when Estonia was the subject of a large-scale Internet assault last year. (See this previous post)
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