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There are still approximately 2,000 American and Russian nuclear missiles poised to be launched on warning at a moments notice. This is potentially very dangerous as former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Retired General James Cartwright argues,
The Risk of Hair-Trigger Nuclear Alert
Experts at the Nuclear Industry Summit, gathered in Washington, say attackers are becoming more skillful and dangerous, meaning companies, governments and regulators must make cybersecurity an industry-wide priority. "Cyberattacks on nuclear facilities have happened,” said Anno Keizer of the Nuclear Industry Summit, who is vice chair of the working group on managing cyberthreats. “It is not a fantasy; it is not a hypothetical situation; it's what happens in real life and which we need to manage in real life. We have also seen that the consequences of an attack can be substantial, both in damaging equipment and disturbing the services that the company delivers to society."
An Iranian technician walks through the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the city of Isfahan, south of the capital Tehran.
A cyberattack against Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power in South Korea saw hackers steal and release information, Keizer says, in what published reports say might have been a bid to raise public concern about the nuclear industry. Other attacks on non-nuclear, major industrial targets also raise concerns. An attack on Ukraine's electric grid left thousands of people without power. That attack used a "sophisticated" program called BlackEnergy that targeted industrial control systems, according to the report. Hackers also caused "massive physical damage" to a German steel mill by taking over control processes and blocking the company's efforts to shut down the facility.
Chaos, damage
Experts at the Nuclear Industry Summit say hackers focus on systems that control industrial and safety processes in important industrial facilities because that is the key to causing chaos and damage. The most successful publicly known cyberattack on a nuclear facility saw malware cause serious damage to production equipment at an Iranian plant that was enriching nuclear materials. The virus was called Stuxnet, and apparently prompted the facility's centrifuges to spin out of control and break down. Computer security experts say the Stuxnet incident shows how a determined hacker can overcome cyber protection efforts by taking advantage of vulnerable employees.
In this case, small thumb drives, or small data storage devices, loaded with the virus were scattered in areas near the targeted facility. Apparently, someone picked up one and, curious about its contents, put it in a computer that controlled production processes. Like many nuclear facilities, the Iranian one was protected against cyberattack by an "air gap," meaning critical computer systems are isolated, and have no physical connection with computers that are connected to the Internet, which are used for routine communication, billing and research. With no connection to the outside world, critical computers were mistakenly thought to be safe from hacking attacks.
‘Weak link’
The summit will feature a special session aimed at preventing and minimizing the threat posed by unsecured nuclear material but analysts see a breakdown on nuclear security cooperation between the United States and Russia they think hinders attempts to address that threat. “Russia is key,” said Tom Collina, Director of Policy at the Ploughshares Fund. “It’s a huge hole in the process not to have them there.” A number of countries – including Pakistan – have security gaps but the size of Russia’s stockpile and the sheer lack of information are causes for concern. Russian and U.S. stockpiles together account for 90 percent of the highly enriched uranium in the world and more than half of all plutonium.
Russian threats
“Since cooperation has wound down, a lot of what we’ve lost is information in terms of what’s going on,” said Collina. “That’s one of the scary things – it’s hard to know what’s going on in Russia.” An Associated Press investigation last year found a thriving black market for nuclear material in Moldova, where authorities are concerned that criminal organizations are smuggling radioactive materials out of Russia and selling to the highest buyer. Collina noted the few materials that have come on the black market have tended to be traced back to Russia as the source. “We know that Russia has large stockpiles of materials. They have an economy that’s in crisis and so that’s a combination of real trouble, and we need more information on what’s happening in Russia, and we need more cooperation so that we can assist with the process,” he said.
Shell, which is the replica of the biggest detonated Soviet nuclear bomb AN-602 (Tsar-Bomb), is on display in Moscow, Russia.
Nuclear threats could originate from a number of areas, including an improvised nuclear device built using stolen highly enriched uranium or plutonium, a sabotage of nuclear facilities or a dirty bomb combining explosives with radioactive materials. The attacks in Paris and Brussels have only intensified ongoing concerns, and according to Collina, terrorists could exploit a number of Russian vulnerabilities to achieve those goals. “Are they putting enough resources into the process of securing these materials? Are they keeping their scientists who know about this stuff engaged so that their knowledge is not leaking across borders? We just don’t know,” Collina said.
US efforts
