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

Good timing for Palladium

[Peter Clary]

Of course, once all computer systems are run on Microsoft's forthcoming Palladium system then such attacks will be completely impossible. Obviously the correct response to this potential threat is to outlaw any OS that does not have Palladium security.

What about the Air Gap

[Ryu2]

Aren't all mission critical infrastructure stuff like defense, air traffic, power, etc. supposed to have "air-gaps"? Ie, they are physically separate and completely inaccessible from the Internet and other public nets. I thought it was standard security practice, or am I wrong.

It's hard to believe that anyone would put something important accessible online, but then you never know... are people really that dumb???!