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Staged Hack Causes Generator to Self-Destruct
An anonymous reader writes "It has been revealed that in a U.S. Department of Homeland Security exercise codenamed 'Aurora' conducted in March of this year, researchers were able to cause a power generator to self-destruct remotely via a hack which changed the operating cycle of the generator. 'Government sources said changes are being made to both computer software and physical hardware to protect power generating equipment. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it is conducting inspections to ensure all nuclear plants have made the fix. Industry experts also said the experiment shows large electric systems are vulnerable in ways not previously demonstrated.'"
While the generators, etc. would blow up the same, what if say the nuclear control rod was also controlled in a very similar manner.....probably likely since people like to reuse components to reduce cost and all.....now say I remotely control that little rod to be moved in that very special way where, say, some sort of nuclear meltdown happens.....
That's the concern with nuclear.....not the whole generator thing, but the extrapolation into what ELSE could be done remotely using similar ideas.
Layne