[Info-vax] OpenVMS in the future, Open sourced or Closed? Intent is to keep it...

[JF Mezei]

On 15-05-02 22:14, David Froble wrote:
>
> Patriot missile systems are connected to the internet?

Saw this documentary a long time ago about some teenager dialing up to
what he thought was a computer game, little did he know that he got into
the Norad system and triggered some timer that theathened to launch
missiles all over the place.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_61

A number of years ago, there was a huge blackout in many areas of
eastern north america. The grids that were all connected to each other
could not cope with a glitch that cause one power plant to stop
supplying the grid and the whole thing went kablouee.

Hint: those power plants are interconnected.

In a separate story, Hydro Québec is mostly hydro powered. The large
dams in the James Bay project are controlled from Montréal.  When demand
is high, they remotely activate more turbines. When demand is low, they
close unneeded ones. This dynamic management also allows the purchase of
surplus power from the USA when it has some.  Because adjusting capacity
in  Nuclear/Coal plats takes forever, the USA utilities preser to sell
that surplus at very low rate. Hydro buys it and shuts down its own
water turbines, preserving water in its reservoirs.

So while the QC and US grids are separate (all exchanges go AC/DC/AC)
there is still a lot of telecom between the two, and lots of remote
management via telecom of the hydro dams throughout québec.

So the concept that all very dangerous plants are all isolated is a
myth. Obviously, they would have firewalls and may not be readily
accesibvel from Internet, but it is quite likekly that some desktops
have access to both internet and the electric grid systems and those PC
could become infection points.

Also Israel had developped the Tuxnet virus targetted at Iran which
spread even through air gaps via USB keys.