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Is the memory you were thinking about, Phsstpok?

No, but that's a good source for the type of stuff I was talking about. Thank you. I'll pass that on to some of my colleagues (see the rest of this post for an explanation of that).

Two years ago the general issue (not the specific incident) in the article you linked to was one of the themes of a session at the Gartner IT conference I attended in San Francisco. It was actually part of a session titled "surviving manufacturing IT" which was talking about the problem corporate IT types (like me) have in dealing with the mill IT types. The mill guys do stuff quick and dirty, what works right now, and are deathly afraid of upgrading, patching or changing anything on the chance that it might bring their production environment down. There was a lot more to it, but the piece that related to your article was talking about how a determined terrorist can (and probably will) break into industrial systems and do the kind of damage that the article you linked to mentions.

The story I related was something told directly to me by a senior person working for the large printer company involved. He was also a senior officer in a... sensitive... reserve unit for one of our military branches that had been deployed during GW1 and was privy to the "tall tales" of his fellows (I won't get more specific than that). He had checked this scuttlebut out since it involved resources from the company he worked for in "the real world" and he'd gotten "the right signals" when he checked with his contacts, both in the military and his company, that told him the story was true. I think he was implying that he was warned off pursuing the issue, but with a wink and a nod.

This is going to be a big area of concern in the near future for a lot of people, but that won't happen till the first highly publicized incident in one of our industrial facilities. I'm half convinced that the big blackout in the northeast a few years ago was such an event but that it was covered up. Even being in the IT position I'm in and keeping track of this sort of stuff (casually, not as a direct part of my job) I had missed the story you linked. I'm passing the link on to our security and disaster recovery folks when I get to work tomorrow. Thanks.