Cyber War On Industrial Sites Looks Real

June 6, 2012
Eric Byres provides an analysis of a couple of recent threads involving industry and Internet security.

One thread was news about a new Malware attack called Flame.

The second was an article in The New York Times and a book which lay out an argument that the Obama administration was behind the Stuxnet attack on Iran's nuclear program.

Says Byres, "The discovery of the Flame malware last week focused the cyber security world on the sophisticated strikes targeting energy companies in the Middle East. Although Flame’s goal was espionage rather than damaging operations as Stuxnet did, it has been seen as one more indication that the industrial world is now in the bull’s eye of clever attackers."

Note that there is no conclusive proof that the US government was behind the attacks--just that there is substantial circumstantial evidence. One of my colleagues jumped to a conclusion recently by proclaiming that this was fact and he had broken the story months ago. We're just pretty sure that cyber warfare involving industrial sites is now a reality. All the more reason to get serious about protecting your plant.

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