Re: SCADA/Municipal water system attacks

>     There was some idle chat here prior about Stuxnet and how it
>     almost single-handed stopped or at least delayed Iran's Nuclear
>     aspirations, and I'd commented on how there was a variant called
>     Duqu that was running rampant in our SCADA systems that run
>     municipal water.

>     Seems our environmentals that run cities have and are being
>     exploited more frequently with more disclosures in the past few
>     days of incidents in Springfield Illinois and Houston Texas.  Not
>     only do I guarantee security on these systems and networks not up
>     to par, their embedded and obscure nature means they probably
>     aren't even regularly patched to take advantage.  In the
>     Springfield incident they actually caused damage to a critical
>     pump, and it's only going to continue to get worse as it's now
>     being talked about more mainstream and word spreads.

>     http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/17/water_utility_hacked/

>     http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/18/second_water_utility_hack/

>     I know I sleep better at night knowing all this software runs on
>     old windoze systems!  Even better is how they're talking about in
>     here how they are often now internet connected systems so they can
>     be managed remotely to save costs (i.e. outsource it).  Maybe
>     letting the Chinese government run our city water systems isn't
>     quite what they had in mind, but anything to save a buck in these
>     trying times I suppose...

>     -mb