Cyber False Flag Soon? DHS Warns "Cyber 9/11" Imminent

U.S. homeland chief: cyber 9/11 could happen "imminently"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned on Thursday that a major cyber attack is a looming threat and could have the same sort of impact as last year's Superstorm Sandy, which knocked out electricity in a large swathe of the Northeast.

Napolitano said a "cyber 9/11" could happen "imminently" and that critical infrastructure - including water, electricity and gas - was very vulnerable to such a strike.

"We shouldn't wait until there is a 9/11 in the cyber world. There are things we can and should be doing right now that, if not prevent, would mitigate the extent of damage," said Napolitano, speaking at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington and referring to the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Link: finance.yahoo.com...

All the pieces are falling into place. The precursors and warning signs are all over. They've been wanting to expand their control over the internet for years.

They hate the fact that the public's views are becoming increasingly 'alternative' to those sanctioned by mainstream television media, since the advent of the internet.
They hate the fact that information is flowing freely, and the greedy are making less $$$ from the distribution of information.
They hate the open source movement.
They hate internet freedom activists like Swartz.
They hate whistle-blowers / truth activists like Assange.
They hate anonymity.
They hate the fact that they have been unsuccessful in ramming things like SOPA down our throats, and in fact have been largely unsuccessful on the majority of these fronts.

So, time to turn to their old standby once again? Crisis-reaction-solution? Never let a good crisis go to waste, isn't that what you said Rahm?

The only question remaining is, who will be the patsy? "Anonymous"? Are they the new Emmanuel Goldstein now that Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are gone? Or will it be China? They've been beating the drums for cyber-war with China for a while now.

No worries.

The vast majority will gladly keep giving away their freedoms in order to be protected from that nasty 'ol boogeyman...whoever the hell that is these days.

Always the question remains "Who will will police the police?"

No answer? Exactly. "

Peace

Critical infrastructure such as water, electric, and gas could be affected by a "cyber attack?" Care to explain to me how this is possible? I thought most of these places were kept off-line, purposely, for this reason. It's not like the controls for the gas company are going to be hooked up to the internet....

Looks like this is more BS to try to clamp down on the internet.

I hope people don't fall for this.

Perhaps I'm slow as it's late and I'm definitely tired. However, WHY did we need to know this??? What in her pea brain made her sit at her desk and say to herself "Self, I think I need to put the fear of something the public can do nothing about into them and scare them all some more"?!

By it's very nature this is no "see something, say something" nonsense on the face of it, so what precisely is the public supposed to DO with this information aside from get more anxiety and general concern from it?

I've thought for awhile now and come to suspect that it's a deliberate effort to keep everyone keyed up, high stressed and generaly snapping at each other, if not outright fighting. What is with this? It's just got little other purpose and this is not right, IMO. The nation could use just a BIT of time to relax, like they seem to be enjoying with their incessant partying.

She's paid to worry about this crap SO WE DON'T HAVE TO. (S/F for the share tho!)

reply to post by iwilliam


You lack a fundamental understanding of how connected all of our world is.

Im not meaning to sound harsh but dont you think if it was that simple Iran would have never got their nuclear plants hit with stuxnet,flame and gauss? The Iranians are not stupid it just so happens our world is to connected in numerous ways

Janet’s saying something intelligent for a change. I am confused at the attacks on this information. I also didn’t see where she stated we were helpless to do anything about it. In fact, she seems to indicate we need to do something about it. ATS is filled with many threads asserting that we have a weak infrastructure, with possible vulnerability from EMP’s, EPB’s, China, Iran, etc. So now someone in an essential capacity echoes what many of us have been claiming for quite some time and all of a sudden it's not an issue any longer because we don’t like the person who is now professing our same beliefs????

reply to post by Gridrebel
It's not about liking her or not liking her, IMO. It's about the Government she represents seemingly being interested in keeping the public in a near constant state of high anxiety ALL the time. There were plenty of threats and some of these very same ones before 9/11. The public didn't hear about them all and DHS/DOD weren't doing training and full action drills literally AS publicly as it could possibly be done and as often as it could reasonably be arranged.

If a stressed out public is their business then I'd say the business is pretty good these days. Things like this stoke it well.

Now if this is something the average American walking down main street can do something about, I'd sure like to know what or how? Utilities? Dams? Water Plants? Okay...They can do something. So send bulletins to them. The few hundred million John Q's probably can't help much so why add to what is already pretty hard times to worry about at the moment, is what I wonder some days lately? Every tiny threat they can think up needs major public announcements with as much description of worst case as they can get without blatantly fear mongering.

Public warns DHS, Real 1776 imminent. Keep it up!

I came across some info stating the DOD want's "their" internet back, just recently.
Wish I could remember where I saw, or, heard it.
(Damn, I hate getting old. My memory just seems to be slip sliding away.)

Anyway, perhaps this is an opening gambit toward that end?

TPTB know, we the people, are not gonna give that back anytime soon. Sooo, maybe this is just another instigation trying to get John Q. Public to lash out so they can clamp down and seize what they all that they want? Seems to me, there's a lot of that kind of thing going on lately.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

Now that the fiscal cliff crisis is simmering down (notice how they stretched that one to the last minute to keep everyone on edge) they have to come up with something else.

DHS has to keep a constant threat level to continue justifying their existence since there haven't been any non-government aided terrorist attacks here since 911.

Our infrastructure is far more vulnerable to physical attack by John Q Public than any "cyber threat" - there's no security on power lines compared to the UK which at least has barbed wire around the towers to discourage tampering. Near where I live the water treatment facilities are basically open to the public unless you count flimsy chain link fences. And while a cyber attack is certainly possible, it takes a specialist to either cross net boundaries from the internet to the private proprietary network servicing the control mechanisms or a physical breach at the hardware level. Back in my government days none of the secured computing infrastructure even used IP addresses or any internet protocols - there wasn't any way to access from the internet until VPNs were established and even then you couldn't get to the command-control interfaces, only the data.

Later, as a contractor, I remember sitting in an underground nuclear-proof bunker looking at a poster in the data security area with a fully decked out SWAT guy completely armored up and a laser red dot just under the guys helmet with a caption that stated there's no such thing as absolute security - physical access to the computer room required passing through a double door "kill zone" with toxic gas if you got past the first door with an access card but you didn't pass the biometric ID check. Still, I got access to the computer room with an administrative-type escort that easily could've been compromised.

My point here is that although there is a credible threat of a "cyber 911", it's not as if the threat is at all likely, especially when there are much easier ways to breach security and engage in mayhem by an average person.
Wrabbit is correct, this is more about "stirring the pot" as we used to call it.

ganjoa

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reply to post by SilentKoala


Which part of this statement is not true? "Napolitano said a "cyber 9/11" could happen "imminently" and that critical infrastructure - including water, electricity and gas - was very vulnerable to such a strike.

If you want to tell me that liberties are being taken with the people in many ways I won't disagree but I have no problem with anything in that line above as it's accurate.

A cyber attack could happen any day that could cause major issues to our infrastructure. That is an accurate threat assessment.

Also for people claiming this is something new , its not and the reality of it is since the first networked computers were involved in our infrastructure we have been at risk.

I wonder if these Cyber false flags will occur during some type of Cyber "training exercise" some how.

Many horrible "events" of late (not Cyber related) have occurred during these "training exercises". Perhaps this is the method of choice to throw off the lower class military personal and law enforcement officers into thinking its only an "exercise" going on and therefore serves in them not acting to stop the event.

One thing about False Flags is to always be aware of military "training exercises" that are going on. Wonder if this will also be used on Cyber false flags somehow.

Originally posted by iwilliam

Critical infrastructure such as water, electric, and gas could be affected by a "cyber attack?" Care to explain to me how this is possible? I thought most of these places were kept off-line, purposely, for this reason. It's not like the controls for the gas company are going to be hooked up to the internet....

Looks like this is more BS to try to clamp down on the internet.

I hope people don't fall for this.

edit on 25-1-2013 by iwilliam because: (no reason given)

All pipelines (gas and water) use internet regulated electric valves that control the flow of materials. If that system is attacked, they could open the "floodgates" and send 30,000 gallons of water per second (some estimates) through the water lines. In the same manner also the natural gas pipelines could be remotely affected to open and create uncontrolable fire hazards and exploses in residential communities due to pressue build up and added friction of the molecules.

The attacker could thorectically flood some areas, as well as cause massive gas explosions the most populated areas of the country as a result.

I just think the previous poster didn't answer your questions as fully as you should know them.

God Bless,

Probably nothing but coincidence and bad timing, but I haven't been able to access my bank website at all today. Getting timeouts every time I access... through multiple devices and operating systems/browsers. :/

Originally posted by iwilliam

Critical infrastructure such as water, electric, and gas could be affected by a "cyber attack?" Care to explain to me how this is possible? I thought most of these places were kept off-line, purposely, for this reason. It's not like the controls for the gas company are going to be hooked up to the internet....

Looks like this is more BS to try to clamp down on the internet.

I hope people don't fall for this.

edit on 25-1-2013 by iwilliam because: (no reason given)

You would really think there would be a air gap, but having worked on some of these networks, sometimes Network guys get lazy, people need to update these systems from the internet, configuration is broken and these systems popup on the public internet.

Check out this report on SCADA

Systems

www.infosecisland.com...

www.cbn.com...