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

Why is important infrastructure online?

[khym]

Why are any of the computers controlling national infrastructure on the Internet or available via modem? Anything that important should be completely cut off from the outside world.

Re:Inconceivable?

[red5]

Prior to September 11th, 2001, it was inconceivable that anyone would be capable of using airplanes as guided missiles and then fly them into buildings. Look where we are now.

Okay what about kamikaze?

"Those that don't learn from history are doomed to be beat to hell by those who do. " -- red5

the real terrorists are governments and media

[g4dget]

Government experts and the media are bombarding us with possible scenarios: smallpox sprayed from crop dusters, terrorist attacks shutting down our stock markets, dirty bombs in New York harbor, nuclear missiles raining down from God-knows-where, etc.

Why do they do that? Certainly not to improve our life expectancy or security. If we wanted to do that, spending $280 billion on public health and education would save a lot more lives than a missile defense system even in the unlikely event that we were attacked and that the system worked. If we are worried about attacks on our financial system, stopping crooks like Enron and WorldCom executives would be a whole lot less trouble and costly, not to mention less threatening to our civil liberties; Osama sending a Microsoft Word virus out of his cave pales in comparison to what a single felonious US executive can achieve.

No, people create fear in order to gain power. That's true for Afghan terrorists as much as for the US government and the media. Creating fear gives people power and it allows politicians to move billions of dollars to their favorite campaign contributors.

Folks, life is dangerous: live with it. And learn to evaluate risks and spend dollars wisely on prevention. Nearly 50000 people die each year in the US in traffic accidents, more Americans than in the entire Vietnam War. Cars cause even more deaths each year from pollution. Smoking causes 440000 premature deaths each year. Obesity causes about 280000 premature deaths each year. (Data comes mostly from JAMA.) Those are all easily preventable, with better education, reduced stress, and a better transportation infrastructure. Instead, however, we get worked up about obscure threats and spend enormous amounts of money on anti-terrorist measures and military hardware that will almost certainly not protect us anyway.

In the literal meaning of "terrorist"--people who create terror for power--governments and the media are way ahead of any third rate coward in some cave halfway around the world. Hold the people who spread fear accountable the next time you go to the ballot box.

Re:Forgotten Y2K fiasco already ?

[MrMickS]

Y2K is called a fiasco because work was done and there were no disasters. People talked about it, spent money checking systems, upgrading systems, fixing problems before the event. No great disaster so all of this was in vain. A hoax. A fiasco.

If the work hadn't been done and there had been disasters wouldn't that have been a greater fiasco?

Situations like this are a no-win. If you do the work and fix problems, you've talked up the problem to get work. If you do nothing and their are problems you are negligent.

Choose now.