Interesting article from National Security expert James Carafano in the Washington Times.
Wake the president. It’s 3 a.m. and the phone is ringing. Loudly. A terrorist group has breached the firewall of the SCADA, the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system that controls the flow of major oil and natural gas pipelines throughout North America.
Related Articles
- The Cost to Build a Globally Dominating Cyber Army: 2 Years and $100 Million [Republished] (gizmodo.com)
- Protecting Cyberspace from Terrorist Attack (businessweek.com)
- Black Hat: U.S. Infrastructure Vulnerable To Cyber Attack (informationweek.com)
As a Canadian whom now calls Indiana home I will say the threat is real and alive. Here is why from my Canadian perspective. In our major cities especially Toronto in the east and Vancouver in the west there are many different people groups whom are expected and even encouraged to keep their heritage, religion etc so those with a Muslim background and therefore an increased statistical chance of becoming Muslim extremist in ideology are considered to be just part of the fabric of society and very unlikely to be reported by neighbors. Compared that to the paranoia I see here in the USA where anyone does something strange and 911 or some intelligence phone number is immediately phoned. Add to that the largest unsecured border in the world and millions if miles of Canadian coast line that is rarely patrolled and you have a scenario where a terror net work will want to smuggle in any thing it wants not through Mexico but through Canada as it will be easy to get people and anything else they want in to the country and then in to the USA. Then of course you have a very educated Canadian public Whom if radical can wreak computer havoc. I see it as a recipe for disaster with the loss of both our and Canada’s freedoms the long term result.
While I see the threat I do not feel this will ever come to pass. At least not in the next 20 or so years.
This article talks about Cyber Terrorism so I want to bring up a big point I have not heard anywere else. I bet most people out there do not know that viruses and rogue security clients now make more money for scammers then drugs. Yes I said it’s more profitable to infect users with bogus security clients then it is to sell drugs. The threat of getting caught is almost non existent.
My point here is I can see terrorist groups raising money hands over fists by infecting everyday average Joes. This money can then be spent on weapons and recruiting. In a matter of one minute I can normally surf the web and find 3-7 sites that have injected code on them from a hacker. While most of this code is just links to viagra and other pills and scams there are still close to 50% of them that link to software that can cause real damage to your computer and so many people fall prey to the scams.
This is a far more real threat the Canada Hacking the US grids. Just something to think about. I would not mind seeing a news story made about this.