CYBER THREAT AWARENESS
Alan Turing, the legendary World War II cryptographer, creator of the conceptual computer, and codebreaker of the infamous Enigma cryptography machine once said, “Those who can imagine anything can create the impossible.” While it may not have been in the same light then as it’s taken now, he was absolutely correct. In fact, this statement, when being applied to quantum computing, mathematics, cryptography, and technology becomes a little terrifying when applied to the current state of cyber and information security. Now more than ever, we have nefarious actors thinking outside the box, and acting on what used to be known as the impossible. Around each corner is a new risk to be managed, and even more malicious “black hats” willing to come up with an exploit.
With new developments every day in the cyber arena, whether positive or negative, your information alone is no longer the highest-value chip on the table. Breaches happen every single day in the thousands. There are amateurs stealing information over Wi-Fi, skimming credit cards at the pump, and utilizing social engineering to collect personally identifiable information (PII). Ransomware, identity theft, data leaks, and "script kiddie" DDoS (distributed-denial-of-service) attacks all suck, sure, but what about the things that could really affect our day-to-day life? Picking up groceries, paying your bills, keeping the lights on, potable water, and functioning hospitals are all critical parts of society and all vulnerable points in the threat landscape. Even worse, the likelihood of a threat acting upon these vulnerabilities is higher than ever.
But before we start talking about the future and how attacks impact the physical world, let’s take a brief look into the past. It’s a quiet Sunday in March 2007 in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and a 2.25-megawatt green maritime generator sits on a cement pad at the U.S Department of Energy’s Idaho National Lab. The DOE, at the time, partnered with other government agencies to explore possible exploits for the modbus communications protocol, widely (still, even) used in industrial control systems. Ahead of the curve for the time period, DOE had the wherewithal to know that backup genera-tors, largely
