- Oct 20, 2013
- 55,729
- 17,705
- 2,250
We just had 2 serious ransomware attacks in America. First the Colonial pipeline, with a multimillion $$ ransom paid to the cyber attackers. Then came an attack on JBS, the world’s largest meat processing company. All JBS-fed beef plants and regional beef plants were shut down.
It is bad enough that international cyber criminals are staging these attacks, and causing havoc among private companies, but what about terrorists ? These could be individuals, terrorist organizations, or even unfriendly countries. And what if the targets they hit are essential utilities like the electrical grid, dams, water treatment and sewage plants, traffic lights, telephone and other communications systems ?
Should we be living with question marks pertaining to things we fundamentally need, to function as a society ? The reason why we are in this mess, which is getting worse as time goes by, is that in recent years we have connected all these essential utilities to computer systems, and made them be reliant that way.
What the US needs to do is have non-computer systems operational, like those that existed for decades before computers even existed. I hope this doesn't come as a shock to anyone, but all our essential utilities functioned nationwide, completely without the help of a single computer. Two world wars were fought without any computers in use.
In the wake of the Colonial Pipeline attack, Biden issued an executive order calling for an upgrade to the federal government’s way of handling cybersecurity. He also created a new Cybersecurity Safety Review Board, led by a private-sector representative and the Department of Homeland Security, that would produce reports on cyberattacks, after the fact.
While these moves are helpful, they only address security from a computer controlled context, which if nothing is done apart from that, won't the whole country still be in serious danger of major shutdowns of just about everything ? Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are well old enough to remember the days before computers, when everything worked, and nobody had any worries about ransomware attacks.
It is time for these old systems to re-emerge, and provide back-ups to our current systems.
It is bad enough that international cyber criminals are staging these attacks, and causing havoc among private companies, but what about terrorists ? These could be individuals, terrorist organizations, or even unfriendly countries. And what if the targets they hit are essential utilities like the electrical grid, dams, water treatment and sewage plants, traffic lights, telephone and other communications systems ?
Should we be living with question marks pertaining to things we fundamentally need, to function as a society ? The reason why we are in this mess, which is getting worse as time goes by, is that in recent years we have connected all these essential utilities to computer systems, and made them be reliant that way.
What the US needs to do is have non-computer systems operational, like those that existed for decades before computers even existed. I hope this doesn't come as a shock to anyone, but all our essential utilities functioned nationwide, completely without the help of a single computer. Two world wars were fought without any computers in use.
In the wake of the Colonial Pipeline attack, Biden issued an executive order calling for an upgrade to the federal government’s way of handling cybersecurity. He also created a new Cybersecurity Safety Review Board, led by a private-sector representative and the Department of Homeland Security, that would produce reports on cyberattacks, after the fact.
While these moves are helpful, they only address security from a computer controlled context, which if nothing is done apart from that, won't the whole country still be in serious danger of major shutdowns of just about everything ? Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are well old enough to remember the days before computers, when everything worked, and nobody had any worries about ransomware attacks.
It is time for these old systems to re-emerge, and provide back-ups to our current systems.
White House: Ransomware attack on major meat processing company 'likely' from Russia
The Biden administration is “assessing” any potential impacts on supply, the White House said on Tuesday.
www.politico.com
Last edited: