SCADA Technology and Cyber Pearl Harbor, page

PBS Frontline has a new special out on cyberwars. It highlights the insecurity of the U.S.’s public infrastructure and describes a technology known as SCADA. Supervisor Controlled Data Acquisition Systems. These devices, most of which are connected to the internet, allowing the user to make physical switches from a remote location. As the videos show, no one actually flips switches at the power plant anymore. All distribution adjustments are made remotely through SCADA devices, including nuclear facilities.

www.pbs.org...

Chapter 4 on the grid is most interesting.

Here’s some excerpts from the interviews:

Michael Skrooch manages the Information Operations Red Team and Assessments (IORTA) group at Sandia National Laboratories.

Could your team, if you wanted to, take down the entire grid in the United States?

The IDART red team could demonstrate numerous vulnerabilities and system effects against U.S. critical infrastructure that are scenario-dependent and adversary-dependent. We do this so that we can help improve the systems so that they can't be taken down in the future, and a cyber Pearl Harbor won't affect the U.S. infrastructures.

But could you if you wanted to?
I won't answer that question. ...

Joseph Weiss, a control systems engineer with KEMA Consulting and a leading expert in control system security.

So just put it in all perspective. What's the worst-case power scenario, power we're talking here -- power lines, power grid?

Absolute worst? I won't even say absolute, but a very worst case could be loss of power for six months or more.

Over how big an area?
Big as you want.

Is that a possibility?
Yes.

How?
I'd just as soon not go into it.

But you believe, as an expert, a man who understands these systems, that indeed that is a possibility?
It's possible.

Why isn't Washington quaking in its shoes?
I can't tell you. I don't know. I don't know.


Couple this with latest MS bug and wow, the internet is still the wild, wild west.

My guide and local listings didn't have Frontline on at all this week, but this show can be seen online using Realplayer:

Frontline: Cyber War!

View the entire 52 minute program here in six consecutive chapters.

Interesting that you mention "Cyber Pearl Harbor" kukla.
Would that be the same as "Electronic Pearl Harbor," by chance?

I found it further interesting that Ex-National Security Council member and ex-Terrorism Czar, Richard Clarke chimed the term "electronic Pearl Harbor" quite often during his various tenure's and positions.
Interesting archive of articles to be found within this:
Electronic Pearl Harbor: A slogan for US Info-warriors
some quotes:

Paraphrased: Anyone still caught uttering "electronic Pearl Harbor" in 1999 is either an ex-Cold Warrior trying to drum up anti-terrorism funding through the clever use of propaganda, completely out of it, or a used-car salesman/white-collar crook of some type.

Like old Jacob Marley, Richard Clarke -- the broken record of the National Security Council -- is produced to rattle his electronic chains and howl menacingly for the rubes.

" . . . Richard A. Clarke of the National Security Council, repeatedly warns them that 'cyberterrorists' could launch computer attacks 'shutting down a city's electricity, shutting down 911 systems, shutting down telephone networks and transportation systems,' as he said in a recent interview."

More accurately, Clarke has been stupefyingly repetitive on the subject through 1999, beginning with another Weiner-penned article on February 1

Here is further links of interests to Richard Clarke and the term "electronic Pearl Harbor"...aka: "Cyber Pearl Harbor".
Richard Clarke and electronic Pearl Harbor



seekerof

[Edited on 19-4-2004 by Seekerof]

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