Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Are You Being Watched? (part 2)


In the movie, “Live Free and Die Hard,” a young hacker joins Bruce Willis to stop a cyber-terrorist who has created a “Fire Sale.” A fire sale is a cyber-attack that performs a three-stage systematic attack on a nation's computer infrastructure. Hackers call it a Fire Sale because "Everything must go." The hacker mastermind in the movie is able to first shut down our transportation systems, then disables our financial systems (banks, Wall Street, etc.), and finally our public utilities such as gas, electric, and communications. Our society becomes increasingly fragile, the more we rely on computers to run everything. Though many of these important computer systems are isolated from networks, all it takes is a single person to infiltrate the system and create havoc. We managed to access Iran's nuclear centrifuges with a single USB drive (look up “Stuxnet Virus”), so it is clear that even isolated computer systems are not safe.

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