[ISN] No, Hackers Can’t Open Hoover Dam Floodgates

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2011 05:29:34 -0600 (CST)
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/02/hoover/

By David Kravets
Threat Level
Wired.com
February 3, 2011 

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is shooting down a key legislative 
talking point: that the internet “kill-switch” legislation is needed to 
prevent cyberterrorists from opening the Hoover Dam’s floodgates.

The brouhaha started last week, when legislative aides on the Homeland 
Security and Governmental Affairs committee offered Threat Level 
examples of why the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act was 
needed. The bill, one aide said, would give the president the power to 
force “the system that controls the floodgates to the Hoover Dam” to cut 
its connection to the net if the government detected an imminent 
cyberattack.

At a panel in Washington last week, a GOP staffer working on the bill 
was even more terrifying. “We are very concerned about an electronic 
control system that could cause the floodgates to come open at the 
Hoover Dam and kill thousands of people in the process,” said Brandon 
Milhorn, staff director of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental 
Affairs Committee. ”That’s a significant concern.”

It turns out, though, that all the Hoover Dam doomsaying doesn’t sit 
well with Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the power-generating 
facility on the Arizona-Nevada state line.

[...]


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Received on Fri Feb 04 2011 - 03:29:34 PST

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