Hackers breach FAA air traffic control systems! Are nuclear reactor control systems really safer?!

Are we taking it for granted that the computers that control nuclear reactors are safe from hackers?! Other major infrastructure computer systems have PROVEN penetration of their computer systems; resulting in stolen passwords; the planting of malicious codes...

The new proposed nuclear ramp-up in Ontario, Canada and the world, would result in thousands of new nuclear plants around the world. Nuclear plants with computer control centres that could be full of technical problems, and software holes that hackers could exploit. And who is guarding against that?

Below are excerpts from Wall Street Journal report about a USA Transportation Department's inspector general report released on May 9, 2009! that suggests that hackers have penetrated government systems throughout 2008! And given that we are pointing out the danger of such hackers to nuclear reactor control systems, it is ironic that the Wall Street Journal article even notes that electrical grid control systems have dangerous links between administrative and operational computer links, that could result in hackers getting into operational functions of the power grid?!!

Excerpt from Wall Street Journal

Last year, hackers of unspecified origin "took over FAA computers in Alaska" to effectively become agency insiders, and traveled the agency networks to Oklahoma, where they stole the network administrator's password and used it to install malicious codes, the report said. These hackers also gained the ability to obtain 40,000 FAA passwords and other information used to control the administrative network, it said.

In February, another cyber break-in yielded the personal information of 48,000 current and former agency employees.

"The threat of hackers interfering with our air-traffic control systems is not just theoretical; it has already happened," said Republican Rep. Tom Petri of Wisconsin, one of the lawmakers who requested the report. "We must regard the strengthening of our air-traffic control security as an urgent matter."

Tom Kellermann, a vice president at Core Security Technologies, a cybersecurity company, likened the threats cited by the report to the television show "24" in which terrorists hack into and commandeer the FAA's air-traffic control system to crash planes. "The integrity of the data on which ground control is relying can be manipulated, much as seen in '24,'" he said.

Most critical infrastructure, such as the electric grid, have developed links between administrative and operational control systems that indirectly link the control systems to the public Internet, intelligence officials said.