14 DAY TRIAL // “The [nuclear] labs are under constant attack, the Department of Energy is under constant attack,” said Thomas D'Agostino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
He recently revealed that state-funded hackers, along with independent cyberciminal organizations are constantly targeting the computer systems of the agency that’s in charge of managing the US’s nuclear weaponry, US News informs.
As a result of the 10 million daily cyber security events that target nuclear facilities, 1,000 of which can be considered successful attacks, the agency is requesting a bigger budget for 2013.
In 2012 the NNSA’s cybersecurity budget is at around $126 million (94.5 million EUR), but they are hoping for $155 million (116 million EUR) in the upcoming year.
One of the more significant incidents occurred in April 2011 when the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory was breached, the hackers managing to steal sensitive data.
In contrast to D’Agostino’s claims, an expert from the Council on Foreign Relations, Adam Segal, believes that not all the 10 million attacks are actually hacking attempts, instead, many of them are recorded because of automated bots that are constantly scanning the Web in search for vulnerabilities.
Furthermore, he states that the chances for hackers to successfully launch a nuclear warhead from a remote location are close to zero.
On the other hand, a piece of malware similar to the infamous Stuxnet could always pose an immense threat to nuclear facilities as real scenarios demonstrated in Iran, Indonesia and India.
However, because of its degree of sophistication, it’s believed that Stuxnet was created by a team of developers somehow associated with a government.
“Stuxnet showed that airgapping (isolation from the standard Internet) is not a perfect defense,” Segal said.
“Even in secure systems, people stick in their thumb drives, they go back and forth between computers. They can find vulnerabilities that way. If people put enough attention to it, they can possibly be penetrated.”
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