Cyber Attacks Caused Brazil Power Outages

cbsnews.com

4 pointsedw5192 comments

Several prominent intelligence sources confirmed that there were a series of cyber attacks in Brazil: one north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005 that affected three cities and tens of thousands of people, and another, much larger event beginning on Sept. 26, 2007. That one in the state of Espirito Santo affected more than three million people in dozens of cities over a two-day period, causing major disruptions. In Vitoria, the world's largest iron ore producer had seven plants knocked offline, costing the company $7 million. It is not clear who did it or what the motive was.

Really? I live in Vitoria, capital of Espirito Santo, and I don't remember an event of power outage with all this proportion taking place here or nearby.

Now that we know someone can take down the power grid (for real, not only in Matrix), I wonder what the response from various governments will be:

- actually isolating the critical systems from the internet, or

- ISP-level and backbone monitoring and suing everyone who tries to use nmap...

unfortunately I've got bad feelings about this.

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