WEEK 7 – Infrastructure Cyber Attack Risk

           The future may hold a new war of cyber-attacks on the worlds infrastructure.  These are attacks used by computer code via directly or overtly and aimed at controlling or sabotaging industrialized countries machines in control of infrastructure. These vulnerable entities entail many well-known everyday items to include driving grid systems, industrial factories, various power plants, financial institutions, health care, and many other systems that a country cannot afford to lose for a sustained amount of time.

           In 2015, a cyber-attack on Ukraine’s power grid left 700,000 people without electricity for several hours. Alarmingly, the actors behind this attack were previously seen conducting attacks against the U.S. energy sector, prompting an alert by the Industrial Control Systems Computer Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) in 2014. Though disruption never occurred in the U.S., this was believed to be reconnaissance for a potential future attack (Brasso, 2016).

           If the United states was targeted, the effects could be catastrophic in regards to how much our system depends on infrastructure. These scenarios involve code that manipulates machines that were never originally made with security in mind. Many of these devices were designed before the digital age explosion and never had net connections in mind upon construction. These vulnerable systems can be directed to shutoff or overrun to cause damage. Worst case scenario would contrast with Iran’s Stuxnet incident in where nuclear power plants were targeted. An environmental disaster in that scale due to a hack could rewrite how the world goes about cyber hacking all together.