Tag Archives: Vulnerable

Cyber expert says to expect more attacks due to a vulnerable system

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Urgent Threat: More Cyberattacks and Shutdowns of Critical US Infrastructure on the Way
  • Cyberattacks increased 38% worldwide last year, and now cybersecurity experts are issuing this urgent warning – critical U.S. infrastructure security breaches and shutdowns may soon be coming.
  • A former C.I.A. hacker turned cybersecurity analyst says the government must act before it’s too late.
  • Was the computer network failure that recently grounded all U.S. air traffic for the first time since 9/11 human error or a cyberattack? While the Federal Aviation Administration insists human error led to the outage, Canada experienced a computer outage the same day.
  • “This is what I would categorize as highly suspicious because these systems have redundancy, they have backups, they have ways to be able to recover,” explained cybersecurity expert Eric Cole, C.E.O. of Secure Anchor.
  • I’m like, okay, say it was human error. Keeps everyone calm, but in reality, it really does sound like a cyberattack and that something went wrong that was unplanned,” Cole said.
  • When looking for likely suspects in such a cyberattack, Russia would be a strong possibility because of its war against Ukraine and the help U.S. and Canada are giving the Ukrainians.
  • …But we also forget that China is also a big target, especially when it comes to critical infrastructure… So from my standpoint, it sounds like what we call a test attack where they wanted to test and just see how vulnerable the systems were, whether they could get in, and how long it would take them to recover,” Cole explained.
  • Although President Biden signed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill into law last November, Cole believes some critical network issues must be considered for air traffic control and other vital national computer systems.
  • So how likely then is another shutdown or a cyberattack not only against an antiquated FAA computer network but other critical government networks – just how vulnerable are they?
  • “Unfortunately, they are very vulnerable. For that reason, you said these are old systems. They’re not typically updated. They’re not typically patched. And the big problem is they’re starting to be interconnected. And that’s where the problem comes in. These systems were designed and built to be what we call in cybersecurity, an air gap, which means completely isolated from any other system or the Internet,” Cole said. “But what’s been happening over the last year or two is they’re interconnecting these to the Internet and other systems to make them easier to use. And because of that, this, to me, is just the beginning. And this year, we’re going to see a lot more of these attacks happening because of that.”

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As the Power Grid has fallen under attack we are now hearing calls for a centralized government agency to be in control. What could go wrong?

Revelations 18:23:’For the merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.’

Important Takeaways:

  • Why America’s electrical grid is vulnerable to attack
  • America’s electrical grid is under attack. Christmas Day attacks on electrical substations in Washington “knocked out power to thousands of customers in the region,” The New York Times reports — part of a string of attacks in the Pacific Northwest dating back to mid-November. Those outages were similar to an early December assault on a North Carolina electrical station that left 45,000 customers without power. “Physical and computerized assaults on the equipment that delivers electricity are at their highest level since at least 2012,” Politico reports
  • Why are power stations vulnerable to attacks?
  • The American grid is decentralized, which does make it more difficult for attackers to knock out power to the entire country. But those substations are often not terribly secure: “Many of the nation’s 55,000 substations are blocked only by chain-link fences, and the equipment is easily accessible once within the fencing,” CBS News reports. The hodge-podge of companies and electricity providers that make up the national power system — more than 3,000 different entities — means that there is “no single agency responsible for managing the resilience of the power grid.” That makes regional and local power failures more likely.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Homeless shelters, programs ill-equipped for coronavirus, U.S. cities warned

By Carey L. Biron

WASHINGTON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Homeless people in the United States are at particular risk of contracting coronavirus, and the systems that care for them are poorly equipped to handle a major outbreak, according to public health experts.

The United States had more than 750 confirmed cases of the respiratory virus – which emerged in China’s Hubei province late last year – as of Tuesday morning and 26 related deaths, as estimated by a national tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.

The count could rise sharply as testing increases this week. More than 110,000 people have been infected globally and about 4,000 people have died, according to a Reuters tally of government announcements.

Fears have been raised that the U.S. homeless population – nearly 600,000 people in 2019 – could be particularly vulnerable to the disease, which spreads primarily through tiny droplets coughed or sneezed from an infected person and inhaled by another.

“For the general public that contracts this virus, they’re told to quarantine, rest and recuperate at home,” said Barbara DiPietro, senior director of policy at the National Health Care for the Homeless Council (NHCHC), a nonprofit.

“What does that mean if you don’t have a home or a service provider who can accommodate them 24/7?,” she said.

Vigilant hygiene can prevent transmission, health experts say, in what could be a challenge for people living without homes.

Los Angeles lawmakers are considering setting up washing facilities in encampments, while county officials in Seattle have purchased a motel and set up modular housing, in part to quarantine homeless individuals who contract the disease.

There have been no reports of coronavirus among U.S. homeless populations.

The U.S. shelter system is ill-equipped to deal with a major outbreak, with most housing open only at night for sleeping and little room for quarantines, DiPietro said.

“We don’t have a homeless services infrastructure that is equipped, funded or staffed to be able to respond to a pandemic public health emergency,” she added.

Concerns about the potential for homeless populations to spread coronavirus have cropped up on social media and among conservative commentators who see homeless encampments ripe for spreading the disease.

But G. Robert Watts, an epidemiologist and head of the NHCHC, downplayed the concerns as “fearmongering”.

Because they often have weakened immune systems, “people experiencing homelessness are at greater risk of contracting this disease than of passing it on,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Several of the U.S. coronavirus cases have been in the states of Washington and California, which have among the highest homeless populations in the country.

Last week the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released extensive new guidance on dealing with infectious disease outbreaks in shelters, encampments and among homeless populations in general.

Also, President Donald Trump on Friday signed an $8.3 billion emergency bill to fight the virus, with $100 million for community health centers that NHCHC said could include homeless services.

Looking ahead to potential dangers, cities and homeless services providers are adopting a spectrum of new strategies for dealing with the outbreak.

“We are developing special protocols such as phone screening for patients calling into our primary care sites, education to prevent the spread of illness and support for our staff,” said Rachel Solotaroff, head of Central City Concern, a nonprofit in Portland, Oregon.

Some shelters are starting to assign people to sleep in the same beds every night to limit the potential for exposure, said Watts.

But homeless people get help from a host of service providers from shelters to food pantries, day centers and outreach teams, all of which are often pressed for resources and left out of response plans, DiPietro said.

A lack of resources could lead any of those to turn away anyone with potential symptoms that are not necessarily coronavirus, triggering a “vast increase” in homeless people with nowhere to go, she said.

(Reporting by Carey L. Biron @clbtea, Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Zoe Tabary. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)

U.S. Electric Grid “Inherently Vulnerable” To Sabotage

A new report says that the United States electrical grid is extremely vulnerable to terrorist attack.

New Jersey’s Regional Operations Intelligence Center released an oversight report that shows an increase in unauthorized access to electrical facilities by unknown persons.

From October 2013 to January 2014, there were at least eight intrusions at New Jersey electrical grid facilities.  The group said that these kinds of intrusions are not unusual given the weak security in place at most of the electrical grid sites.

The report says that the intrusions show the vulnerability of the grid to attack.

“The electrical grid – a network of power generating plants, transmission lines, substations and distribution lines – is inherently vulnerable,” the report reads.  “Transmission substations are critical links in the electrical grid, making it possible for electricity to move long distances and serving as hubs for intersecting power lines.  Many of the grid’s important components sit out in the open, often in remote locations, protected by little more than cameras and chain-link fences.”

Other examples of sabotage on the power grid were displayed including someone removing the bolts from an electric tower’s support structure, which increased the potential for collapse.

In April, a group of gunmen destroyed transformers with a series of sniper rounds and cut underground fiber optic cables at a California power substation.