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The Cyber Threat To the Global Oil Supply
Lasrick writes "Blake Clayton has an excellent piece on the cyber threat to the global oil supply. His description of the August attack on Saudi Aramco, which rendered thirty thousand of its computers useless, helps make his point. From the article: 'The future of energy insecurity has arrived. In August, a devastating cyber attack rocked one of the world’s most powerful oil companies, Saudi Aramco, Riyadh’s state-owned giant, rendering thirty thousand of its computers useless. This was no garden-variety breach. In the eyes of U.S. defense secretary Leon Panetta, it was “probably the most destructive attack that the private sector has seen to date.”'"
From the article: "probably the most destructive attack that the private sector has seen to date" ... and then "Saudi oil operations were unaffected by the computer outage". Wow, that is truly destructive.
Then there is this nugget "American consumers could suffer because of an incident involving an oil company that they know little about and is located thousands of miles away".... so hasn't that been the case for the last, what, 30 years?
It is not a cyber attack. It is just the project ORCA meant to help the election day volunteers for Mitt Romney got its URL messed up and kept redirecting traffic from its http server to https server. It somehow sent everything via Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Aramco is just a bystander caught in the cross fire. Simple glitch.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Before any number of potential calamities affect the increasingly vulnerable oil chain. Adversaries realize that this is our Achilles heel and that any disruption will cause an immense impact on the world economy. I just hope we have effective plans in place to counteract any actions taken, as well as proactively identifying, nullifying and persecuting any organizations or states that choose to pursue any actions along these lines.
What, me worry?
Yet another attempt at FUD to get the American people to accept higher gas prices. Yet another way for them to arbitrarily increase gas prices even though there's plenty available.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Unless 5 million dollars are transferred to the following numbered account in 7 days, I will capsize 5 tankers in the Ellingson fleet.
Yeah, it's not anything happened in '73 and '79 with the devaluation of the dollar to show us where "energy insecurity" comes from.
Jeeze, what lame bullshit to give the damn cops even more power.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
To summarise the article:
.. maybe. Senior people in the US say 'something could go wrong!' but they don't all agree on that."
/.? Is /. becoming a site devoted to fear-mongering and right wing political activism? I mean seriously, just because it has 'cyber' in the title, doesn't mean that there's anything of interest to /. readers in the text!
"There was an attack! This could cause some problem, somewhere, sometime
Serious, serious FUD. This is like a CBS broadcast calling for increased funding for cyber defense.
The journal is published by one of those 'think tanks' which try to form foreign policy by delivering analysis funded by industry heavyweights. This one (believe it or not) founded by Richard Nixon. How does this find the front page of
Once again Terrorists are forcing companies to use operating systems and other software well-known to be insecure on critical servers! You will know these Terrorists because of their distinctive clothing: Ties and Business Suits, which are never worn by software and security specialists. Alas, there may be nothing we can do to counter this Terrorist Threat as the Terrorists seem to have taken over our Corporate Boardrooms.
But there's no cause for alarm: everyone knows that the more you pay for software the more secure it is, right? And we can always retaliate against any Cyberattacks, unless of course they come from Botnets installed on our own citizens' computers.
Yet another attempt at FUD to get the American people to accept higher gas prices.
Nonsense. This is an attempt at FUD to get the American people to accept higher defense spending.
... they will learn to not have critical infrastructure accessible via the Internet?
One can only hope.
Saudi Armco don't connect their oil production control systems to their public network. They made it clear it did not affect oil production.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/29/saudi_aramco_malware_attack_analysis/
"Oil and production systems were run off "isolated network systems unaffected by the attack, which the firm has pledged to investigate. In the meantime, Saudi Aramco promised to improve the security of its network to guard against fresh assaults."
But it's always a nuisance when even the administration computers get a virus, so they should improve their systems.
The fix for critical system vulnerability is: KEEP THEM ON SECURE PRIVATE NETWORKS. You cannot trust firewalls or VPNs since these are complex software, a simple physical separation of networks is and always will be the best fix. And Armco know this and did this.
and gas prices... and more intrusive government supervision of the internet...
a attack can still jump the network by copying it self to the remove media used to make the jump. Or attack the data to go after the app.
Not that I'm applauding the actions of hackers (legitimate or otherwise). Nor am I suggesting that we should all do our best to bring Down The Saudis (or anyone/everyone else involved in Oil production, for that matter).
Having raised all those caveats, however: Is THIS not good for everyone in the long term?
Those who were attacked will update their systems, those who rely on oil will rethink their policies. Maybe if we're really (really really really) lucky there'll be greater investment in energy solutions OTHER than fossil-fuels.
I see a whole lot of SILVER LINING and not much dark stormcloud here.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I don't see the big deal. Citizens in other countries pay considerably more. Using http://www.whatprice.co.uk/petrol-prices/ as a point of reference, the cheapest unleaded gasoline (petrol) is nearly 8 U.S. Dollars per U.S. gallon at the time of this post.
The problem with the U.S. is that public transportation is not set up as it is in the UK and much of Europe, as many others have stated on other sites. Many U.S. citizens are forced to own motor vehicles or rely on someone who owns one to transport them where they need to go, unless they use a bicycle or walk, and neither is terribly feasible in my area.
I know people who bike to work and complain often about nearly being hit by a driver who starts driving onto the shoulder and the route to take to work involves streets with a speed limit of 45 mph or more, not that it's respected anyway, especially in the wee hours of the morning. Bike lanes? They exist to an extent, but they're not widespread enough, and there isn't exactly sidewalk everywhere either. Simply put, a motor vehicle is the best option in the U.S., especially out in the country.
Otherwise, I'd say raise the taxes to make us pay more for gas, and those who didn't like it would just use public transportation or find another way of getting where they need to go.
The US Energy Information Administration claims that the US dependence on oil from The Persian Gulf is approximately 22%, so even if they dropped off the face of the planet (ie immediately/suddenly, tomorrow) it would not make all that much of a difference.
Sure it'd be a massive PITA for maybe as much as a month, then we'd all get over it and wonder what the fuss was about.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
> or is it part of some kind of war???
Of course it is. And there is a lesson: People who live in glass houses should not throw Stuxnets.
I suppose the biggest threat to the global oil supply is the fact that it's finite and that we burn 85 millions barrel a day.
state-owned = private sector???
I think you mean ==. You just assigned private sector to state-owned.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
What do they mean by useless? Windows wouldn't boot? or did the computers explode, or did the virus flash the bios with garbage, even then you could resolder a new bios chip on! Would be hard to make multiple computers completely useless!
No, it cleaned off all of the crapware, adware and browser taskbars. The computers were finally able to boot into windows quickly, thus rendering them immediately useless.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
With the exception of maybe 12 organizations in the world, EVERYONE has mission critical systems connected indirectly to the internet. In a "highly secure" organization, I'd have two machines on my desk, one is not connected to the internet and has access to an important database. The other has internet access. That's good, right? Problem is, I need to be able to transfer information between my two desktops, so there is some sort of connection between them. That makes an indirect connection between the internet and the critical database. More analogous to the TFA case, where it was 30,000 machines, 75% of their desktops, losing that number of ANYTHING is damaging. Let's say you consider a desktop used by a customer service rep "not mission critical". The web site and mail system have to be connected to the internet, of course. How would your company be affected if you lost email, the web site, amd the customer service department for a week or two? How about if the payroll person's desktop is down also? Heck, even dumb things like the toilet paper delivery seem pretty important when you lose them.
This guy is not a security expert. His bio: "Before joining the Council, I was a sell-side commodity strategist at Louis Capital Markets." That's a brokerage firm. A "sell-side analyst" is really a PR guy who generates happy-talk "buy" recommendations which are sent to customers.
and of that $8 per U.S. Gallon, 50 percent or more is parlimentary taxes. If you reduce the tax rate per gallon to what we pay in the United States, which is $0.14 cents, you'd understand why we are pissed at the Oil Companies because of the price of fuel, 90 percent of it goes to the oil company and every chance they get, they push the price up and tell us we're lucky we aint paying the same as in the EU and the rest of te world. No We aint because if we were, then the current $4.00 per gallon cost in my area would mean we're actually paying $2.00 per gallon for product with the remainder being taxes.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
What about the rural areas that make up 90% of this country? I should bike 40 miles to get to the grocery store... and then?
This is a good point when comapring U.S. transportation to Europe. The country is bigger than Europe. Alaska alone is the size of many small European countries combined. Things here are newer and the country was developed in the forge of the industrial revolution not in the days of pure horse travel and monarchs.
Or you know, install Linux on the user segment. You might be forced to hire a couple of people that knows what they are doing though. Yap the Oil company are doooooomed!!!!!111
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Yet another attempt at FUD to get the American people to accept higher gas prices. Yet another way for them to arbitrarily increase gas prices even though there's plenty available.
--
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I like your signature.
I love the irony of that signature appended to what constitutes your comment.
You will eventually be paying more for fuel; either it goes to a) government taxes which can pay down debt or maintain / enhance infrastructure, or b) it goes to corporate profits / speculators' pockets.
So, when BigOilCo(tm) gets a refinery / pipeline, etc. incapacitated such as this story refers to, gas prices will immediately increase. And only (maybe) return to initial price after newly refined fuel has flowed through the entire (repaired) system, and repairs have been paid for. Yay for speculators / corporate profits.
Or, pay more in taxes, get better transit and fewer crumbling bridges, enjoy the uptick in economy from jobs created, and in future, rely less on BigOilCos.
However, it's hardly arbitrary.
Simply get off running on imported oil. The fastest way for USA is to move to Natural Gas for our commercial vehicles and large passenger vehicles. We have abundant supplies
Everything you said is wrong.
First, we do _not_ have abundant supplies. We are already running out of natural gas sources, which don't last forever. This is why there is so much push to engage in the destructive process of fracking; that's how we get more natural gas. Asking us to use more natural gas is asking for more fracking. Second, that would NOT repeat NOT be the fastest way, it would be THE MOST EXPENSIVE way, because our commercial vehicles and large passenger vehicles run on diesel fuel, and cannot reasonably be converted to natural gas. That only works for gassers, which have a compatible compression ratio. Converting a gasser to natural gas involves preventing gasoline delivery, and installing a special regulator, it costs a few hundred bucks. Converting a diesel to natural gas involves changing engines. The fastest way would be to produce biodiesel from algae on seawater in the desert using technology proven at Sandia NREL in the 1980s with our tax dollars. We have more than enough land sitting around under the dominion of the BLM to replace 100% of our transportation fuels with biodiesel-from-algae.
Your ideas are bad, and no one should subscribe to your newsletter.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you live in a house, you could just generate your own power. Many cases have less need every day to keep dependending on others and paying for it.
http://otherpower.com/
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
And yet, new commercial vehicles are bought all the time. By moving THESE to NG, the conversion happens relatively quickly. In fact, according to one study, if NAT GAS had been passed in 2012 (God dammned neo-cons who will never put the nation first), then by 2020, we would not have any imported oil. That is not to say that we will not use oil, just that we will not need imported oil.
Actually, we are LOADED with Nat gas. Running out is not an issue. Why? Because we have multiple means of converting coal to natural gas (actually methane). Estimates are that with the nat gas of 75 years combined with the coal converted will give us around 300 years (though doing that would be insane; but this is a GOOD temporary step).
Now, you will bring up economics. The CURRENT price of Nat Gas is $3.50/MMBTU. Normally, the Nat Gas price in America is around $5.00/MMBTU. The market is currently saturated with supplies and wells are capped.
In addition, in EU, it is $8.00/MMBTU. And in China, it is $20.00/MMBTU.
So, the question becomes, how cheap is gas/diesel for a similar MMBTU? At 90/Bl, it is around $28/MMBTU.
Of course, that begs the question of how much does coal->methane costs? Well, with prices for coal from 2006 (expensive) combined with Great Point Energy Conversion, the price is $4.50.
Please, continue pushing your newsletter. You and your fellow conspiracy fans can continue to push a line of BS without any knowledge of what really is going on.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
See what countries pay for gas, and where the developed countries are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_and_diesel_usage_and_pricing
Country - gas prices (in US$ / US Gallon)
Norway - 9.69
Netherlands - 9.35
Denmark 8.90
Sweden 8.90
Finland 8.82
Italy 8.74
France 8.63
United Kingdom 8.63
Belgium 8.44
[...]
United States 3.88
[...]
Brunei 0.39
Oman 0.31
Bahrain 0.27
Kuwait 0.224
Qatar (Doha) 0.83
Turkmenistan 0.72
Libya - 0.64
Saudi Arabia (Riyadh, Jeddah) 0.45
Venezuela 0.085
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/