Cyber-Attacks?

Galahad2 writes "The Washington Post has a lengthy article about the Bush administration's fears of an Al Qaeda cyber attack on the nation's infrastructure. Though we have all seen this sort of attack as a possiblity for a long time, I'm having a hard time believing that Al Qaeda is capable of anything along these lines." You're not the only one. The article does cite an example of the only known infrastructure attack, a case in Australia where a consultant used his inside knowledge of a local sewage treatment system to dump raw sewage, hoping for a contract to solve the problem he created.

Comments

An all out DoS attack?

[Lonath]

So might this be an all-out DoS attack looking to shut down the spread of the fruits of the decadent, imperialist American culture? Would they try to clog the networks so that people can't share any type of creative endeavour that represents the freedom that all Americans enjoy? Oh wait. That would be these people. My bad. Move along. Nothing to see here. I get those groups trying to subvert freedom at all costs in pursuit of their twisted ideology confused sometimes. (NB: I am not condoning piracy. But you shouldn't let companies engage in the kinds of activities that terrorits might do. :P) Also, is there a new version of Godwin's law relating to calling someone a terrorist?

Re:Forgotten Y2K fiasco already ?

[gd23ka]

Osama Bin Laden has a lot of money and he can hire the brightest hackers on the planet to come after your information systems. :-)

Re:Why is important infrastructure online?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not cost effective to employ a skilled individual to be on-site at each and every location so some remote access is necessary.

And there, in that very sentence, is one of the primary reasons why capitalism sucks.

"So what if remote access allows a potential portal for abuse, so long as we're saving money it doesn't matter!"

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I guess somebody, somwhere, with a very large brain and an economics degree to keep him company, thought that one up

Re:Forgotten Y2K fiasco already ?

[DohDamit]

spoken like someone who didn't have to fix legacy systems that handled credit card expiration dates and probably didn't do a fucking thing related to computers on the eve of Y2K.