Over the last four years, foreign hackers have stolen source code and blueprints to the oil and water pipelines and power grid of the United States and have infiltrated the Department of Energy’s networks 150 times.
So what’s stopping them from shutting us down?
The phrase “cyber-Pearl Harbor” first appeared in the 1990s. For the last 20 years, policy makers have predicted catastrophic situations in which hackers blow up oil pipelines, contaminate the water supply, open the nation’s floodgates and send airplanes on collision courses by hacking air traffic control systems.
“They could, for example, derail passenger trains or, even more dangerous, derail trains loaded with lethal chemicals,” former Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta warned in 2012. “They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.”
It is getting harder to write off such predictions as fearmongering. The number of attacks against industrial control systems more than doubled to 675,186 in January 2014 from 163,228 in January 2013, according to Dell Security — most of those in the United States, Britain and Finland.
And in many cases, outages at airports and financial exchanges — like a computer outage that took down computers at airports across the country late Wednesday, including Kennedy International Airport in New York and Logan Airport in Boston — are never tied to hacks.
But it’s clear hackers are trying.
The Department of Homeland Security last year announced that it was investigating an attack against 1,000 energy companies across Europe and North America. In 2012, 23 gas pipeline companies were hacked by online spies, according to a Homeland Security report. Private investigators later linked the attack to China.
Last year, in a disclosure overshadowed by the news of the attack on Sony, a German federal agency said that in an attack at an unnamed steel mill, hackers had managed to jump from the company’s corporate network to its production systems, causing significant damage to a blast furnace.
And in an extensive attack at Telvent, an information technology and industrial automation company now owned by Schneider Electric, Chinese hackers made off with its product source code and blueprints to facilities operated by its customers, which include 60 percent of the pipeline operators in North America.
For now, dire predictions of destructive online attacks on American targets ignore the fact that the actors with the ability to cause the gravest harm to America’s critical infrastructure — China and Russia and allies like Israel and Britain — are sufficiently deterred from doing so by fear of retaliation or because of longstanding trade and diplomatic relationships. And attacks by those aggressively trying to get such a capability — Iran, North Korea and Islamic militant groups — are still several years off.
Read more: Online Attacks on Infrastructure Are Increasing at a Worrying Pace
The Latest on: Online Attacks on Infrastructure
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Online Attacks on Infrastructure” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Online Attacks on Infrastructure
- CISA Helps Critical Infrastructure Organizations Prevent Ransomware Attacks Through Pilot Programon April 26, 2024 at 2:30 pm
Looking for the latest Government Contracting News? Read about CISA Helps Critical Infrastructure Organizations Prevent Ransomware Attacks Through Pilot ...
- Bitcoin Is Built To Last: How The Network Defends Against Attackson April 26, 2024 at 9:30 am
Bitcoin is not invincible, but was designed with resilience at its core. The eighth installment of “10 Steps to Self-Sovereignty” powered by Ledger.
- New OT security service can help secure against critical systems attackson April 24, 2024 at 6:00 am
Critical Start’s new offering is designed to handle security teams with specialized detection and response tooling for operational technology systems.
- Ukrainian CERT describes attacks on critical infrastructureon April 23, 2024 at 12:14 pm
Ukraine's CERT has apparently prevented attacks on critical infrastructure. The authority now describes its findings.
- Forescout: Security threats to exposed critical infrastructure go ignoredon April 23, 2024 at 10:21 am
Many asset owners are likely unaware that OT/ICS systems contain potentially vulnerable devices exposed to the internet.
- Synlab Italia suspends operations following ransomware attackon April 22, 2024 at 8:27 am
Synlab Italia has suspended all its medical diagnostic and testing services after a ransomware attack forced its IT systems to be taken offline.
- Ukraine Strikes at Heart of Russia With Massive Drone Attackon April 22, 2024 at 7:25 am
An oil facility in Bryansk oblast is the latest piece of energy infrastructure to be hit in a drone attack linked to Ukraine.
- Ukrainian Aerial Strikes Hit Energy Facilities Across Russia, as Conflict Spills into Maritime Infrastructureon April 21, 2024 at 4:03 pm
Amidst the ongoing hostilities, Ukraine’s Armed Forces executed an airborne strike targeting the energy sector in various parts of Russia on April 20. The operations aimed at energy assets closely ...
- Ukraine launches drone attacks targeting Russian energy infrastructure, Ukraine special services source sayson April 20, 2024 at 9:29 am
Ukraine launched attacks on eight Russian regions with long-range strike drones in the early hours of Saturday morning, targeting a fuel depot and power substations, according to a statement from a ...
- Russia destroys almost all thermal power generation in Ukraine, attacks on its nuclear power plants possible – Zelenskyyon April 17, 2024 at 11:57 pm
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy does not rule out that Russians may attack the infrastructure of Ukrainian nuclear power plants. In this regard, he asks to provide Ukraine with modern air defence ...
via Bing News