Posted on 01/19/2008 8:29:48 AM PST by STARWISE
Several cities outside the U.S. have sustained attacks on utility systems and extortion demands.
Criminals have been able to hack into computer systems via the Internet and cut power to several cities, a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analyst said this week.
Speaking at a conference of security professionals on Wednesday, CIA analyst Tom Donahue disclosed the recently declassified attacks while offering few specifics on what actually went wrong.
Criminals have launched online attacks that disrupted power equipment in several regions outside of the U.S., he said, without identifying the countries affected.
The goal of the attacks was extortion, he said.
"We have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands," he said in a statement posted to the Web on Friday by the conference's organizers, the SANS Institute.
"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."
"According to Mr. Donahue, the CIA actively and thoroughly considered the benefits and risks of making this information public, and came down on the side of disclosure," SANS said in the statement.
*snip*
He confirmed SANS' report of the talk. "There were apparently a couple of incidents where extortionists cut off power to several cities using some sort of attack on the power grid, and it does not appear to be a physical attack," he said.
Hacking the power grid made front-page headlines in September when CNN aired a video showing an Idaho National Laboratory demonstration of a software attack on the computer system used to control a power generator. In the demonstration, the smoking generator was rendered inoperable.
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
My favorite Willis line in the movie is, "Is there some sort of number you call like a 1-800 number? 1-800-henchmen?" He kept killing them and more kept showing up. lol
Ping.
Fyi..
No, I think it really means that power grids are just a bad idea, assuming that the CIA knows what the hell it’s talking about.
Things that make you go “Hmmmm....”
No power means no pumps.
No pumps means no gasoline, and no water.
A few gas stations may have generators, but lines will form there and gas supplies won’t last long.
Without water, you have 72 hours, give or take, to find more before dehydration puts you down.
Standard Clorox, 5.5 percent Sodium Hypochlorite, no perfumes or fresheners, will kill most water borne pathogens, 8 drops per gallon for clear water, 16 drops per gallon of cloudy water.
Even if you don’t believe hackers can turn out the lights, the US electrical grid IS vulnerable, as past outages have proven.
Having a Plan B that covers basic survival is mandatory.
What next?
Do that on Election Day in the big cities, hackers. The voters will thank you.
Since they won’t tell you which country had the episode...it makes you wonder if this was a 3rd world country...like Albania or Burma...or if it was a country like Norway or Italy. I’m betting it wasn’t a European country...and the electrical company probably didn’t even have a firewall set up on their network. This lack of a firewall would be a major embarrassment and not something you’d want to admit.
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