Blackouts highlight network vulnerabilities

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This is really serious!

This small article really hints of the potential disasters that can take place if people are lax in their security concern or are ignorant of the consequences. The reactor plant in Ohio whose control net was infected by the MS SQL slammer virus should be a WAKE-UP call to everyone.

The following paper was published by the federal nuclear agency on the causes of the failure of the plant's nuclear control system:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/gen-comm/info-notices/2003/in200314.pdf

Bottom line: kife-critical systems should not be connected without proper prophylactic measures to MS s/w; pls practice safe engineering!

The problem is that the firewalls are becoming increasingly ineffective in filtering the dangerous traffic. A malicious packet can masquarade itself to an "OK" one and this is just a matter of time.

IP security should be used in a comprehensive maner, especially to life-critical systems. And pls do not connect control systems to networks that run MS s/w! This is an increasingly harder task, since many embedded system providers are relying increasingly to ms windows for the control of plants!

It IS a really serious matter.
-m

Posted by: michael-t   Posted on: 11/25/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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