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DHS Critical Infrastructure 2025 Strategic Risk Assessment

DHS Critical Infrastructure 2025 Strategic Risk Assessment

Unread postby vox_mundi » Wed 06 Jul 2016, 14:20:34

DHS Report Finds “Immeasurable Vulnerabilities and Attack Vectors” Against U.S. Critical Infrastructure

(U) This strategic risk assessment provides an overview of six distinguishable trends emerging in U.S. critical infrastructure. These trends, when combined or examined singularly, are likely to significantly influence critical infrastructure and its resiliency during the next 10 years.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Office of Cyber and Infrastructure Analysis identified the following trends likely to have a profound effect on critical infrastructure:
- Convergence of the Cyber and Physical Domains
- Aerial Threats: NTAT (Non-Traditional Aviation Technology)
- Evolving Terrorist Threat
- Extreme Weather: A Gloomy Forecast
- Next Pandemic: Emergence and Outbreak

The failure of stakeholders and senior policy makers to anticipate and mitigate the consequences of these trends is likely to result in disruption of U.S. critical infrastructure. OCIA assesses that these trends, if left ignored, will weaken and degrade U.S. critical infrastructure during the next decade and likely lead to national security consequences.
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https://info.publicintelligence.net/DHS ... re2025.pdf

(U) DHS/OCIA assesses that a significant number of U.S. infrastructure assets are approaching the end of their designed life spans. Budget cuts across federal, state, and local governments limit the funding available for infrastructure inspections, maintenance, upgrades, and repairs. In some critical infrastructure sectors, a labor force shortage in the coming decades is likely to hamper efforts aimed at implementing and maintaining critical infrastructure upgrades. The risk of failure in the Transportation Systems, Energy, Water and Wastewater Systems, and Dams Sectors is highly likely to increase during the next 10 years.

(U) DHS/OCIA assesses that a possible increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events is likely to result in damage to critical infrastructure and could result in population shifts. Regions unaccustomed to extreme weather will become more susceptible and vulnerable to storm surges in the coming decades.

... As information and communication technology (ICT) is increasingly depended upon in “all 16 critical infrastructure sectors,” there is an “inherent reliance on a network connection for functionality” that “creates numerous vulnerabilities” and makes “universal security extremely difficult and improbable, allowing cyber attackers to more easily exploit critical infrastructure.”

Failures of “critical infrastructure IoT devices” could result not just in “economic loss through lost productivity and damage to the national economy,” but also “adversely affect public safety through physical infrastructure damage or catastrophic infrastructure failure.”

Industrial control systems (ICS), such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, that are connected to cloud infrastructure are also cited as a growing concern as “cloud providers are generally not prepared or equipped” to address many of the specialized security needs of these systems. The report states that the “compromise of critical infrastructure SCADA systems that are connected to cloud infrastructure could have a direct physical effect on human life.

While the assessment states that cyberactivity by nation-states is focused primarily on “data theft” as well as “accessing and maintaining presence on ICS” networks and systems, the report uses unusually blunt language to describe how this kind of access would likely be used as “part of nation-state contingency planning” only to be “implemented to conduct a damaging or disruptive attack in the event of hostilities with the United States.

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http://www.environmentmagazine.org/se/u ... fExport=NO
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late.
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Re: DHS Critical Infrastructure 2025 Strategic Risk Assessme

Unread postby Newfie » Wed 06 Jul 2016, 20:40:49

The Worl Economic Forum puts out an annual report along these same lines.

Coming down the St Lawrence the other day I was looking at the HVAC feeds from Quebeck into NY. 8 lines running in parallel across the river and then they go all different ways some crossing over numerous others.

I was reminded of copper thieves stealing static wires that fell across a much smaller line, and melted the railway stone where they fell. Oh what a mess it would make.
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Re: DHS Critical Infrastructure 2025 Strategic Risk Assessme

Unread postby vox_mundi » Thu 07 Jul 2016, 12:40:58

Stuxnet Cyberwarfare Documentary ‘Zero Days’ is the Summer’s Scariest Film

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Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney believes the first atomic bomb of the cyberwarfare age has already been dropped.

That bomb was Stuxnet, a computer virus that's the subject of Gibney's latest movie, "Zero Days." Stuxnet disrupted an Iranian uranium-enrichment facility beginning in 2010 and set back Iran's nuclear ambitions. Iran considers Stuxnet part of a concerted effort by Israel and the U.S. to undermine its nuclear program through covert operations, though neither government has acknowledged any involvement.

"Zero Days" is an examination of Stuxnet: how outside security researchers got wind of it, where it came from, and what it portends for global security in the future.

... The potential threat from these kinds of cyberweapons is huge, especially when you start talking about shutting down electric power grids. I'm not talking about the threat to me personally, but the threat to all of us. We're just at a point where everyone is starting to recognize the potential calamity.

We’re getting into All the President’s Men territory here, though if anything, the stakes are higher here; asked to pinpoint his paranoia levels before and after making the film, Gibney laughed, “Extreme/extremer.” But these are the kind of big questions our best non-fiction films can, and should, pose: do the potential benefits of such a sophisticated weapon outweigh its possible abuse? In theory, it allows an attack on a hostile nation-state without troop deployment or collateral damage, but is this a genie you want out of its bottle?

“From a moral perspective, I think we should take it extremely seriously,” Gibney said. “I think that’s the point of making the film. Now that the weapons are a relatively unadvanced stage – even though they’re at a stage where they can shut down entire grids – now we should be looking at that, and that I think was actually the reason why a number of the sources came forward, because they were convinced that the people at Cyber Command, particularly the military officials at Cyber Command, didn’t really have a full enough appreciation of the damage that these weapons can do.”
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late.
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Re: DHS Critical Infrastructure 2025 Strategic Risk Assessme

Unread postby onlooker » Fri 08 Jul 2016, 16:43:47

Thanks Vox for that very informative links and this topic which stretches the imagination. One thing though that is indisputable to any who have studies all this and that is the slow but ever accelerating deterioration of the foundations of our civilization via Peak Oil, climate change and resource shortages that every day will be getting worse. It is fair to say that World Civilization reached an Apex sometime in the 20th century and that from that point on we have been slowly but with ever more speed going downhill. So the risks highlighted by the original post are certainly valid but they are but sideshows to the unwinding of human civilization that can no longer keep at bay the forces of overshoot correction. So the technocrats are sounding the alarm as as the military etc. but the real alarm has and is being sounded by Earth scientists who are aghast and our continued assault upon Earth and what that signifies for all living beings including us.
"We are mortal beings doomed to die
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