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Are Squirrels A Bigger Threat To Our Critical Infrastructure? (bbc.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the fluffy-but-deadly dept.

"The real threat to global critical infrastructure is not enemy states or organizations but squirrels, according to one security expert." Long-time Slashdot reader randomErr quotes the BBC. Cris Thomas has been tracking power cuts caused by animals since 2013... His Cyber Squirrel 1 project was set up to counteract what he called the "ludicrousness of cyber-war claims by people at high levels in government and industry", he told the audience at the Shmoocon security conference in Washington. Squirrels topped the list with 879 "attacks", followed by birds with 434 attacks and then snakes at 83 attacks.
Those three animals -- along with rats -- have caused 1,700 different power cuts affecting nearly 5,000,000 people .

5 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. He's missing the point. by Cyberpunk+Reality · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Squirrels and birds are never going to scare the public to the point of feeling good about hundreds of billions in spending, or freely abandoning long-cherished rights.

    --
    Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
    1. Re:He's missing the point. by Sarten-X · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Squirrels and birds are also never going to be launching coordinated events designed to overwhelm the utilities' abilities to bypass and repair damage. Nobody cares that a foreign nation might be able to shut down a provider. The concern is that they might shut down all providers.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    2. Re:He's missing the point. by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It would be nice if people could learn to think in terms of threats that fell somewhere between "safe to ignore" and "extinction level event". Or could distinguish between "extreme and expensive" responses and "effective" ones.

      9/11 could have been prevented by simple, conservative and inexpensive countermeasures. After 9/11 politicians droned on about how "9/11 changed everything," but the cold sober fact was that it in fact changed nothing. It just showed that some of the things sensible people had already been telling us to do (like reinforcing cockpit doors or getting agencies to work together despite institutional rivalries) really did need to be done. Instead "9/11 changed everything" became the rallying cry for every pet scheme that had heretofore been correctly dismissed as too expensive, hare-brained, or just plain dumb.

      Which doesn't change the fact that something needed to be done. Here's the lesson I think we should take into this infrastructure debate: we should take sensible and conservative steps to secure infrastructure against terrorism now, before events put foolish ones on the table.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  2. Re:How about ... by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Or meth heads trying to steal the copper out of electric cables or other equipment.

  3. Re:Squirrels spread their attacks conveniently by Kohath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, the difference between random factors like squirrels and attackers is that random factors don't learn and adapt and scale up their attacks. Random factors stop randomly. Attackers don't stop unless you stop them.