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Playing with Iranian Cyber-Fire

Your mother told you not to play with fire.

The United States government could be playing with fire. If you remember the U.S. attack on Iranian centrifuges years ago, the software was Stuznet.

The Iranians re-engineered the attack vector/software and have used it against U.S. infrastructure.

It was reported that after the physical bombs and missile attack were called off, the U.S. retaliated with an unspecified cyberattack. Truly a 21st-century approach to warfare. 

Here's the rub, the Iranians left a calling card reference the cyberattack on a very small New York dam, meaning, they can do other attacks on U.S. infrastructure, which we know is vulnerable to cyberattack. Thus, if this degrades into a tit-for-tat engagement, we emergency managers could become very busy with consequence management, if the power goes out, the water stops flowing, the fuel pipelines don't pump, the drawbridge opens and is locked "open" and on and on.

Pandora's box of cyber is already open and what was inside is "out and about" ready to be used again.

 

 

Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.