To me, the most interesting part of the 60 minutes video was the 30 second clip with the guy who talked about the real threat not coming from an all-out attack, but a more insidious corruption of data over time. It would be much more effective to minorly fuck up transactions in such a way that went unnoticed, possibly long enough to make it into the backup tapes and have a cumulative effect over time. Like on the stock exchange, its easy to shut the whole thing down but impossible to unwind trades once they’ve already happened.
Defense.gov News Photo 110426-A-7597S-183: U.S. Special Operations service members with Special Operations Task Force South board two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters following a clearing operation in Panjwa'i district in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, on April 25, 2011. Source: Wikimedia.
The mention of corrupted USB drives being used to provide access to the Centcom computers reminded me of PROMIS software’s backdoor capabilities.
Threat Level Privacy, Crime and Security Online
Brazilian Blackout Traced to Sooty Insulators, Not Hackers
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/brazil_blackout/
To me, the most interesting part of the 60 minutes video was the 30 second clip with the guy who talked about the real threat not coming from an all-out attack, but a more insidious corruption of data over time. It would be much more effective to minorly fuck up transactions in such a way that went unnoticed, possibly long enough to make it into the backup tapes and have a cumulative effect over time. Like on the stock exchange, its easy to shut the whole thing down but impossible to unwind trades once they’ve already happened.