Nevermind. We're all going to die anyway.

So it turns out that now the cyber realm can reach right into the physical realm and destroy our nuclear power plants and other facilities with only the physical help of one rogue employee. Just peachy.

Now that a template is out, (thanks to either the US or Israel, most likely) it's only a matter of time until a rogue group or perturbed individual or opposing nation state or competing companies (to name a few) start using this against each other. No materials or otherwise incriminating evidence required, only hacking knowledge and one inside man--oh, and the continued use of windows in factories.

Well, Stuxnet malware is 'weapon' out to destroy ... Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant? - Yahoo! News has a layman's story. If you really want to get into it read the articles from Symantec and other security firms. Basically we're all going to die, so hurry up and finish those degrees, or stop spending your money and go on a booze cruise to Africa, whatever is your first priority ^-^

 

Either I have rendered you all speechless or the gravity of the situation has escaped you. As for MC, he's just crazy

 

Well, speaking for myself, I'm still going to the beach today and I still have to go to work on Monday.

 

The internet is a public place, probably the most public place that has ever existed in human history. Connecting something to the internet is like leaving it out on the street. Nothing should be connected to the internet that isn't intended for public contact.

The threat that pimply-faced adolescents or foreign intelligence agencies can bring down critical domestic infrastructure with a key-click half the world away means that any function that requires greater security will have to think about moving onto more-secure special-purpose networks. I believe that the US and other militaries already run their own more-secure networks.

 

@Bill:
I think you may not know about the kind of computers being attacked and the huge weakness being exploited here, there are no known attacks that exploited this kind of computer in the past. These computers are not connected to the Internet, they are programmed by (often windows based) computers often belonging to outside contractors. Silent attacks are almost undetectable (and rare) so there is no reason to believe that the programming computer is compromised. The virus is silently transfered and nobody knows. It's not just military targets that are the primary concern, but also utilities and privately run factories. If one successfully shuts down and destroys a significant portion of our private factories America will struggle very quickly. The end result is that all important factories will have to patch every weakness of the OS used by the programming computer.


Currently infrastructure in factories was not designed to defend against this kind of threat. Another important fact is that malware is being spread through flash drives, silently. This is a big deal, this is a huge deal. As it stands now we are totally exposed, I just hope we figure it out in time....

@MC:
Wow, that was amazing

 

..a bit early to give up on everything, isn't it? Like Kizmet said, still gotta do what you gotta do! Live isn't going to stop today.... live life to the fullest and enjoy it - it's short enough as it is without worrying about things we can not influence.

..back to sipping my tea

 

My title is just a joke
well it's 85% a joke.

 

*shakes head questioningly*

 

*ricky's dumb look betrays his ignorance*

but thanks for doing the legwork! Now I'm less ignorant.