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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?
Unless 5 million dollars are transferred to the following numbered account in 7 days, I will capsize 5 tankers in the Ellingson fleet.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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