Re: Dan 55 Re: I wonder...
"....raging authoritarian populists...." You talking about Obama? I mean, it's not like the industry has been warning for years that the grid (and other utilities - remember the Stuxnet furor?) are badly protected against hacking, yet all of a sudden (when the DNC needs to blame an election result on it) Obama starts "punishing" the Russians! I'd have to say this is far too little and far too late from the Obama administration, just a frustrated tantrum rather than what they should have started years ago. It's not like the idea of air-gapping was born yesterday (IIRC, the Bell-LaPadula security model talked about it in the '70s!), so - given the shrieking about Chinese and Russian hacking for at least the last five years - why hasn't anyone in Obama's administration done anything to enforce basic security measures like air-gapping as a Federal requirement on utility operators, let alone areas like voting machines? It's not like Gee Dubya didn't set the ball rolling with the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Properly enforced air-gapping virtually eliminates the threat of the kind of phishing attacks used in Vermont. But no, Obama was more interested in "building his legacy" than actually focusing on real issues.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
