Hasn't there been speculation that a terrorist attack might involve a cyber attack against key infrastructure? Osama bin Laden might have taken down a few computers and shut down the grid. Totally plausible in my view given the ability of hackers to take down various businesses as evidenced by the Blaster worm in the past few days.
Sure is plausible to me.
I'd particularly feel better if the government *wouldn't* rush to tell us there's no sign of terrorism when something happens, but would wait until they *know*. I think the immediate reassurances, when it's pretty hard to imagine they have a lot of concrete information on hand, have the reverse effect of what they're hoping for.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50765-2002Jun26 Cyber-Attacks by Al Qaeda Feared
Terrorists at Threshold of Using Internet as Tool of Bloodshed, Experts Say
One al Qaeda laptop found in Afghanistan, sources said, had made multiple visits to a French site run by the Societé Anonyme, or Anonymous Society. The site offers a two-volume online "Sabotage Handbook" with sections on tools of the trade, planning a hit, switch gear and instrumentation, anti-surveillance methods and advanced techniques. In Islamic chat rooms, other computers linked to al Qaeda had access to "cracking" tools used to search out networked computers, scan for security flaws and exploit them to gain entry -- or full command.
Most significantly, perhaps, U.S. investigators have found evidence in the logs that mark a browser's path through the Internet that al Qaeda operators spent time on sites that offer software and programming instructions for the digital switches that run power, water, transport and communications grids. In some interrogations, the most recent of which was reported to policymakers last week, al Qaeda prisoners have described intentions, in general terms, to use those tools.
Specialized digital devices are used by the millions as the brains of American "critical infrastructure" -- a term defined by federal directive to mean industrial sectors that are "essential to the minimum operations of the economy and government."
The devices are called distributed control systems, or DCS, and supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, systems. The simplest ones collect measurements, throw railway switches, close circuit-breakers or adjust valves in the pipes that carry water, oil and gas. More complicated versions sift incoming data, govern multiple devices and cover a broader area.
What is new and dangerous is that most of these devices are now being connected to the Internet -- some of them, according to classified "Red Team" intrusion exercises, in ways that their owners do not suspect.
Because the digital controls were not designed with public access in mind, they typically lack even rudimentary security, having fewer safeguards than the purchase of flowers online. Much of the technical information required to penetrate these systems is widely discussed in the public forums of the affected industries, and specialists said the security flaws are well known to potential attackers.