• Chertoff calls for cyber-deterrence doctrine

    More than 100 countries now have cyber-espionage and cyber-attack capabilities; both kinds of attack used the same tools and might be used to mount anything from a garden variety cyber-espionage attack resulting in the corruption of financial data to something that might result in loss of life, such as a possible attack against air-traffic control systems; governments should formulate a doctrine to stave off cyberattacks similar to the cold war-era principle of nuclear deterrence, according to former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff.; “Everyone needs to understand to rules of the game”

  • With rising sea levels, the time for adapting is now

    Coastal development has accelerated over the past fifty years; many of the world’s megacities are situated at the coast and new infrastructure worth billions of dollars is being constructed; these developments assume that the stable sea levels of the past several millennia will continue — but this assumption is no longer true

  • Study: U.S. grid robust, hard to bring down

    Reliance on a particular kind of mathematical model — a so-called topological model — for understanding complex systems has led a growing number of researchers to conclude that the U.S. electric grid is exceedingly vulnerable to disruption; two mathematicians now argue that these studies “have ignored the physics of how things actually work — like electricity infrastructure”; an examination of how the grid actually works would show that the U.S. electrical grid is probably more secure that many people realize

  • U.S. power grid easy prey for hackers

    Attackers could manipulate power-grid data by breaking into substations and intercepting communications between substations, grid operators, and electricity suppliers; grid hackers could make millions of dollars at the expense of electricity consumers by influencing electricity markets; they could also make the grid unstable, causing blackouts

  • Large parts of the world are drying up

    The soils in large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, including major portions of Australia, Africa, and South America, have been drying up in the past decade as a result of intensified “evapotranspiration” — the movement of water from the land to the atmosphere

  • Experts: Stuxnet "a game changer"

    EU cybersecurity agency warns that the Stuxnet malware is a game changer for critical information infrastructure protection; PLC controllers of SCADA systems infected with the worm might be programmed to establish destructive over/under pressure conditions by running pumps at different frequencies; Dr. Udo Helmbrecht, chief of EU’s cybersecurity agency: “Stuxnet is a new class and dimension of malware—- The fact that perpetrators activated such an attack tool, can be considered as the ‘first strike’ against major industrial resources. This has tremendous effect on how to protect national [cyber and critical infrastructure] in the future’

  • Securing privately owned critical infrastructure networks

    Securing the industrial control systems (ICS) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) networks that are used to run the U.S. critical infrastructure is a daunting job; as in other areas of critical infrastructure protection, ICS and SCADA risk mitigation falls to private owner-operators, as do the costs

  • Iran: Stuxnet part of Western sabotage campaign

    Iran claims that the Stuxnet virus which infected more than 30,000 computers used in industrial control systems in the country — many of them in Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities, especially to yet-to-become operational Bushehr nuclear power plant — is part of a covert Western plot to derail its nuclear program; this is the most direct admission by Iran that the West — read: the United States and Israel — have been engaged in a systematic covert sabotage campaign to derail Iran’s weapons program

  • Growing concerns about U.S. aging gas pipeline network

    A disturbing realization has emerged from the wreckage of a deadly pipeline explosion in California: There are thousands of pipes just like it across the United States; experts say that pipes of some age were put in the ground before the dense population arrived and now the dense population is right over the pipes; thousands of pipelines across the United States fit the bill, and serious incidents are not infrequent; federal officials have recorded 2,840 significant gas pipeline accidents since 1990, more than a third causing deaths and significant injuries

  • Gas pipeline info kept secret for security reasons, hampering disaster response

    The United States has a 2.5-million-mile network of gas transmission lines; citing fears that terrorists might try to blow up the U.S. natural gas pipelines, federal regulators and the industry have made it extremely difficult for homeowners to learn the location of pipelines and any history of inspections and repairs — information that safety advocates say could save lives

  • San Bruno gas pipe failure started with bad welds or corrosion

    The failure of a natural-gas pipeline that ruptured three weeks ago, devastating a San Bruno neighborhood, may have started along a weld or in a weakened section of the 54-year-old pipe; “This pipe basically unpeeled and failed catastrophically,” said Tom Bowman, chairman of the thermosciences division in Stanford University’s mechanical engineering department

  • Stuxnet, world's first "cyber superweapon," attacks China

    Stuxnet, the most sophisticated malware ever designed, could make factory boilers explode, destroy gas pipelines, or even cause a nuclear plant to malfunction; experts suspect it was designed by Israeli intelligence programmers to disrupt the operations of Iran’s nuclear facilities — especially that country’s centrifuge farms and the nuclear reactor in Bushehr; it has now infected Chinese industrial control systems as well; one security expert says: “The Stuxnet worm is a wake-up call to governments around the world—- It is the first known worm to target industrial control systems”

  • Stuxnet shows how nuclear plants may be attacked

    Security experts say that critical infrastructure firms need to respond quickly in order to protect their systems from Stuxnet, and warn that its spread may mark the beginning of increased cyber espionage and sabotage; what is especially worrisome about Stuxnet is that a pattern in its code — designed to match that of a specific application — suggests that the worm’s authors had a specific facility in mind

  • Iran admits its nuclear facilities are under massive cyberattack

    Iran has confirmed that 30,000 computers in the country’s power stations, including the nuclear reactor in Bushehr, have been attacked by the Stuxnet worm; the Stuxnet worm is described by experts as the most complex piece of malware ever designed; once Stuxnet gains access to a plant’s computers, it hunts out specific software that controls operations such as the opening and closing of valves or temperature regulation; by halting those processes it can cause extensive damage to nuclear power stations, power grids or other industrial facilities; the high number of infections in Iran have led experts to conclude that the worm may have been designed in the United States or Israel to disable Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities

  • Secure network for critical infrastructure idea draws fire

    The Obama administration wants to develop a secure computer network to defend civilian government agencies and critical civilian infrastructure and industries; the restricted network would allow the government to provide greater protection to vital online operations and critical infrastructure — such as financial networks, commercial aviation systems, and the national power grid — from Internet-based attacks; critics say this ambitious idea is impractical