Absolutely 100% spot on. It’s not a political issue, it’s a technical issue. Disconnect them from the internet. Run your security patches. Check your logs. Water supplies are pretty important, do your job.
“Run your security patches” is easier said than done in the case of OT and it’s actually an issue that is further upstream than this. Policies, procedures, culture, and resources to execute. None of which are technical.
can't reboot, the machinists have the windows sized and positioned on screen just like they like them since 1997, so if you reboot it will cause downtime
Kind of feels like national security is the job of the federal government. Seems fair to say the federal government should do their job. They started a war for no reason and failed to anticipate not only these infrastructure breach but also the closure of the Hormuz strait.
The federal government could potentially oversee the most populous areas of the state and those near a military installation pretty easily. They don’t have to look at every one.
The federal government makes sure everyone who sends a venmo for $60 pays taxes on it so yeah I think securing our national infrastructure is not an unreasonable expectation.
There's no "national infrastructure" for water. Aside from what the EPA does, it isn't within the remit of the federal government to manage municipality water systems.
My wording was ambiguous. “national infrastructure” can refer to either the infrastructure in our nation or infrastructure managed by the federal government. I meant the former.
Usually these commenters are not from the US but get energized by US topics and misunderstand scale of things. E.g., they come from countries with a single nationalized entity for many things.
There are 150 million taxpayers and the federal government regulates all of them. I don’t see why they can’t audit 0.1% of that. If there are 150,000 utilities then absent some regulation, some of them will fuck up. If we want fewer fuckups, you need regulation.
It’s the same regulatory/incentive toolbox as any industry, including possibly accepting lower security standards for tiny treatment plants just like we accept less security for podunk airports.
> make the feds do it
National Security has always been a federal government responsibility. You make it sound like I’m expecting the federal government to take on some new responsibility. If the federal government starts a war with another country they’re absolutely responsible for minimizing by collateral damage at a fucking minimum.
National Security has always been a federal government responsibility yes. But what does that fundamentally mean for boots on the ground?
NSA doesn’t do IT for the DoD/W, DHS doesn’t do IT for the government, CISA only gives guidance where they can. And IT does not equal OT. The issue comes down to actual skilled people hours to do the work and resource constraints to do so.
I agree that in theory this would not be a stretch if the stars aligned, but these are for the most part, not federal government funded entities nor government controlled even at a state level. They are usually clooged together by 100 years of paper maché. And that’s just water. What about Energy? Data Centers? Pharma? Regulation is way too far behind to just instantly drop a silver bullet.
And 100% agree that we are witnessing repercussions of leadership that did not have much forethought but that ain’t new and goes back quite a ways especially in CI.