The Wall Street Journal is reporting serious compromises in computer security around key infrastructure in the United States. I would not be surprised if the same issues are present in the other countries of the G-20. The article can be found at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123914805204099085.html.
While it is not surprising that the attempted hacks occurred, it is surprising that the companies involved did not catch them. Instead various government intelligence and law enforcement agencies discovered the intrusions.
For me, the surprise came in just how much infrastructure is vulnerable. It does extend to items I had not considered in the past. I expect nuclear power plants, the NY Stock exchange and NASDAQ to be targets, and thus have very sophisticated defenses. I did not think of sewage treatment plants, for example, as targets, but when one considers the damage that could be done – as well as the pure gross out factor (if one can apply the term “pure” in this situation) – then they are a target.
Living in Colorado, where one is upstream from pretty much everyone west of the Mississippi, one realizes the damage this could do. A hack on sewage treatment facilities on the treatment plants for just the cities on the front range (Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Denver and Fort Collins, plus associated smaller communities) would be devastating not just to those cities, but to Eastern Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana as well.