(07-10-2020, 07:12 AM)StroudCrowd1 Wrote:

(07-10-2020, 05:45 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: I'm not attacking your post or anything; I just have an honest question: how can a cyber attack cause something to blow up?  I'm not saying it can't; I'm just having a hard time coming up with a scenario where a cyber attack can cause an explosion.

This is 2020. Plants aren't operating with our grandparents control systems.

Unfortunately a lot of the systems are. I got first hand experience from a client, never went to a plant, but know about all the issues they have. The control systems are modernized somewhat in the command center, but once you are inside the contaminated area it is generally all original systems. You have people looking at paper manuals in the command center and contaminated area. It's challenging to get signals in and out, they are in spotty cell coverage areas, and access to sensor data is not readily available to the outside. So all the alerting and controlling programs are built to interact with the older and dumb systems that control the plant. There are big issues right now with trying to figure out what to connect to a network and what to limit access for. There is a lot of valuable data that can be captured, but if you open it up so you can get the data, you expose the plant to hacking.

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