nuclear-news

Nuclear power plants are vulnerable to ‘cyber attacks’

A U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman declined to say whether there have been any cyber strikes against the nation’s nuclear power sector.

Nation’s nuclear power plants prepare for cyberattacks – Nextgov,By Martin Matishak, Global Security Newswire 08/30/2010 “………..Cyberattacks have been an increasing source of concern in recent years but the threat was highlighted in July by the first discovery of malicious code specifically formulated to target the systems that direct the inner operations of industrial plants. To date the malware is thought to have infected more than 15,000 computers worldwide, mostly in Iran, Indonesia and India.

The issue is critically important for new nuclear power facilities that would be built in the United States and throughout the world as control rooms would employ digital systems to operate the plants. Those state-of-the-art instruments and systems make them targets for hackers.

A U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman declined to say whether there have been any cyber strikes against the nation’s nuclear power sector. Security events, including a computer-based attack at an energy facility, would be “sensitive information” and therefore not released to the public, she said……

The safety and control systems that operate nuclear power plants are isolated from the Internet and are protected against outside invasion. Yet in some cases, those operating systems and other critical infrastructure are decades old and not completely separated from computer networks used to manage administrative systems. Those gaps provide potential gateways for hackers to insert viruses, malicious codes and worms…….

September 1, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, safety | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear secrecy, reactors