Thursday, December 27, 2007

SCADA Watch: Hackers May Threaten Economy

A Newshouse News Service article by Garry Lenton, via The Houston Chronicle, reports that:

In the action movie Live Free or Die Hard, Bruce Willis' character, John McClane, battles leap-frogging villains, launches cars into helicopters and regularly defies the laws of physics, all to stop a madman trying to take over government computer systems.

But could a hacker really take control of a vital computer system and sabotage it?

It already has been done, and thousands of attempts occur every day.

In October 2006, a virus was slipped into the computer system at a Pennsylvania water filtration plant. Though the future of the free world did not hang in the balance — the incident was relatively minor and caused no damage or threat — it drew the attention of computer security experts nationwide because it wasn't supposed to happen.

More here.

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