A slight deviation this week. A story that recently caught my attention and one that I definitely didn't know about until this summer was the increasing amount of cyber attacks on the United States. With the increasing amount of computer technology also comes an increased amount of vulnerabilities. As summarized in the article, the internet's utility for connectivity comes with a price. Since 2010, reported cyberattacks have almost tripled from 116 to 342 with 2 months left in the year. However, it is important to note that these reports are not mandatory so it's possible that there may be many more attacks than the ones we know about.
This brings to light some very real issues, such as a virus infecting the Uranium enrichment facility in Iran last year. This article suggests that the United States and many nations will now have to focus heavily on developing teams such as the one in Idaho that are trained to deal with these kinds of attacks. It's scary to think that someone or some entity with malevolent intentions could infiltrate a power plant without physically stepping on the grounds. Like the previous weeks' posts about Anon and Lulzsec, this reveals yet another arena to make an aggressive political move, even one that may endanger others.
article used: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/30/scitech/main20113730.shtml
I think this is quite interesting, and it reminds me of a book I read, "One Second After," by William Forstchen. While not exactly a cyberattack, it focused on an electromagnetic pulse that knocked out all electronics in the country. Seeing how much we depend on computers was a real wake-up call, as in the book, everything from power plants to life support systems to cars went kaput. Almost all our computer and electronics systems are so connected that they're like holiday light strings - if one bulb goes out, they all go out. Even if it’s a single power plant, the effects of the outage (or worse) will ripple through the surrounding area and impact thousands of people. Knowing that something similar to the scenario in the book could happen with a virus/cyberattack is just frightening. If we're thrown back to 1900s-level technology, could we overcome our reliance on all the services our computers do for us?
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