I found the article, "TAKEDOWN: Targets, Tools, & Technocracy", by Robert David Steele, to be most enlightening - especially in the area of idenitfying infrastructural soft spots in the US. Terrorists, please DO NOT read this. Could 00 be the ultimate terrorist?

The full article, from the US Army War College website, is at: carlisle-www.army.mil/usassi/ssipubs/stratcon/steele.htm [ size 36960 bytes - 4/30/98 4:29:42 PM GMT ]

ABSTRACT This paper is a "primer" which attempts to place national security and national intelligence in a larger context, one which must be understood if America is to survive and prosper at the dawn of the 21st Century. The targets are too numerous to discuss in detail, but they can be grouped into four large categories: physical, cybernetic, data, and mind-set. The tools are also too numerous to discuss in detailtools as elementary as paperclips and pick-axes can inflict grave damage on very complex and inherently fragile systems. Of gravest concern in considering the tools available to wreak havoc on our national infrastructure is the simple fact that we remain our own worst enemywe actively open the door to insider abuse, out-sourced code, and naked data. Our technocracy and its culture will continue to impede change...

Here are a few of the identified soft spots:

Federal Reserve

Until a couple of years ago there were twelve regional computing centers, one for each of the Federal Reserve regions. Then we went to a single national system which a single hot back-up computing system, and an additional cold back-up alternative. IC Downlinks

Past surveys have focused on buildings, but the more capable attackers will focus on downlinks. All of the main satellite downlinksfor NSA, CIA, Area 58, key other government departments, are out in public sight and reachable with a hand-held anti-tank missile fired from outside the fence line.

Bridges, Levees & Dams

In the United States, the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, natural wonders in their own right, are also natural obstacles of monumental proportions. There are exactly six mainstream railway bridges across these great rivers, across the vast majority of the grains must go from the plains to the East Coast cities, and the vast majority of the goods must in return from the Northeast and the South. As the natural flooding in 1993 demonstrated, when these bridges are closed, whether by accident or intent, there are severe repercussions for trade, and especially for the stockage of food and fuel. Recent breaks in levees in the south have demonstrated our vulnerability to the assumption that man can contain nature without regard to human attack. This bears emphasis: all insurance and risk calculations today assume natural causes of disaster. There are no calculations for risk and damage associated with deliberate human attack of any normal civil structure. Dams, in contrast, present computer controlled physical infrastructures which can be taken over to either release flood waters, or to avoid the release of flood waters with the intent of weakening if not destroying the dam.

Power Generators

Power generators and the grids they support can be browned out, burned out, and confused. Altering the computer readings can cause them to draw more power than they can handle, or less power than they need. Burning out the generators or melting core lines creates the interesting challenge of replacement in the absence of mainstream power. There are exactly eighteen main power transformers that tie together the entire U.S. grid, and we have only oneperhaps twogenerators in storage. Interestingly, all of these come from Germany, where there is a six to eighteen month waiting period for filling ordersassuming the Germany generators have not been burned out at the same time by someone attacking the Western powers in a transatlantic cyber-war.

Cincinnati Rail Yards

As of three years ago, and very likely still today, the entire East-West railway architecture depended on exactly one major turnstile for redirecting railcars. It is located in the Three Rivers area, and represents a significant vulnerability.

Culpepper Switch

A popular target, this simply represents the kind of critical communications node (voice and data, especially financial and logistics data) which can be attacked in both physical and electronic ways. The Internet has various equivalent nodes, two of which merit special attentionMAYEAST and MAYWEST. Taking out MAYEAST disconnects the U.S. government from the rest of the Internet world, and not incidentally does terrible things to all of the Wall Street capitalists who are "tunneling" their Intranets across the larger Internet.

-- Zach Anderson (z@figure.8m.com), June 25, 1999

Answers

Burning out the generators or melting core lines creates the interesting challenge of replacement in the absence of mainstream power. There are exactly eighteen main power transformers that tie together the entire U.S. grid, and we have only oneperhaps two generators in storage. Interestingly, all of these come from Germany, where there is a six to eighteen month waiting period for filling ordersassuming the Germany generators have not been burned out at the same time by someone attacking the Western powers in a transatlantic cyber-war.

"Interesting", indeed. At least for now - expect a different adjective when/if it actually happens. Thanks, Zach.

-- Lisa (lisa@work.now), June 25, 1999.

"All of the main satellite downlinks-for NSA, CIA, Area 58, key other government departments..."

Okay, I'll bite. Area 58?!!!?

WW, who's been to the other place but has never heard of this one.

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), June 26, 1999.