The agency tasked with protecting America’s nukes and nuclear secrets has disclosed that its computer systems are attacked as many as 10 MILLION times a day.
Scary right? Learn more here.
28 Wednesday Mar 2012
Posted Science Fact of the Day
inThe agency tasked with protecting America’s nukes and nuclear secrets has disclosed that its computer systems are attacked as many as 10 MILLION times a day.
Scary right? Learn more here.
According to the department’s head, Thomas D’Agostino, the NNSA’s security systems are constantly being probed by all sorts of hackers, “They’re from other countries’ [governments], but we also get fairly sophisticated non-state actors as well,” he told US News. “The [nuclear] labs are under constant attack, the Department of Energy is under constant attack.”
Silos are protected by an “Air Gap” in that they are sequestered from the rest of the Internet and run on a smaller, dedicated network. However, once inside, hackers can steal information, as they did in Oak Ridge National Laboratory last April. Intruders made off with several MB of classified data in that case.
I’m just curious why the system is connected to the Internet *at all*.