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