German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says (2016)

One? Pretty well usually. Reactor trips are common enough that the grid is designed to handle it. If multiple reactors shut down simultaneously the loss of supply could exceed available margins and disrupt service.

Here is the most recent (June 6th, BRAIDWOOD) full power trip reported in the US: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/...

There was another last week but it was only from 2% power at the time. We see a couple every month and few ever notice.

Say, you sabotage "dumb" automation system to break and turn the car suddenly right. When the failures starts to happen, manufacturer eventually notices it and recalls vehicles. Maybe tens or hundreds of people will be injured.

But what if the system has access to date and time trough CAN bus? If design a system that steers all affected cars suddenly right at the same time the cascade can kill and injure thousands and cause huge panic. People are afraid to drive until the problem is fixed.

https://www.securityfocus.com/news/6767

'The Slammer worm penetrated a private computer network at Ohio's Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in January and disabled a safety monitoring system for nearly five hours, despite a belief by plant personnel that the network was protected by a firewall, SecurityFocus has learned.

The breach did not pose a safety hazard. The troubled plant had been offline since February, 2002, when workers discovered a 6-by-5-inch hole in the plant's reactor head. Moreover, the monitoring system, called a Safety Parameter Display System, had a redundant analog backup that was unaffected by the worm. But at least one expert says the case illustrates a growing cybersecurity problem in the nuclear power industry, where interconnection between plant and corporate networks is becoming more common, and is permitted by federal safety regulations.'

Sounds like the plant was being operated by a skeleton crew since it was mostly disabled.

Different countries have different safety requirements for nuclear power plants, all plants are not necessarily equally secure. Safety is expensive to implement and manufacturers provide different choices.

You're going to have to be specific about claims like this, because this comes across as FUD in the US given the stringent transparency requirements the NRC holds licensees accountable.

To see current events: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/...

Edit: Also your argument about the failure of Chernobyl is not compelling as you provide no evidence of how the existing analog systems failed in a way that digital systems would not leading to an an aversion of the accident. It is generally accepted that it was a combination of [lack of] system redundancy (analog or digital does not matter), inherent risk with the beta reactor design coefficient, and poor operator understanding of the neutron poison buildup from the low power excursion.

So that (another guess) means that the android phone needs to be under complete control of the malware.

Is that common or are my guesses/assumptions wrong?

Cant limit even what looks like a mouse to be a mouse only..

I don't suppose they are any harder to "hack" than Windows. In fact, it is possible that they may be easier depending on the security mentality of the manufacturer, and given the number of eyeballs on WindowsTM.

I can only imagine this will get worse as these controllers become more and more sophisticated.

The only way, in my opinion, to safeguard against this, is have a fully disconnected system, with no USB access. However USB is easy.