Cyber Threats. Real or Myth

My opinion. They are as real as everything else. Governments, politicians.

In an ideal world (not the one we live in obviously), we should expect no critical infrastructure communication network is physically connected to the internet. I personally don't believe they are. They shouldn't. Classical example, power grid. What else. The controlling part of the phone providers. The military. Etc..

They should and probably have their own separate physical networks. It would be insane if they didn't.

Many people can't make the distinction between the front sites of the institutions giving access to a tiny fraction of the information from those sectors and their internal networks. There may be connections but one way only. Read only, if  you want. By hardware design.

By example. One should be able to go and check online his account with the power company. But that is the accounting part of it. And only the read only of the accounting part of it that details power usage and whatever, price, cost. The rest of it as the IT infrastructure controlling the grid should be physically isolated from the internet and probably is. Same with banks, government agencies, etc..

From time to time they come and bring us this unverifiable "news". Things that happened in the past and "they didn't know". Those that if you search the source of, you would find to be the source of all confusions and misunderstandings we leave with nowadays. When they squeeze everything they can out of those that never verify in the end they switch to some other imaginary threat.

About the recent "Russian" cyberattacks. The main problem here is the Russians don't deny it or don't make the slightest effort to educate the public in "the other countries" they are supposedly menacing. I bet vast majority of Russians don't even know about. They have a totally different view of the world, with their own journalists and their own news, tailored to their needs. And the language and especially the alphabet barriers. Most Russians can't read latin alphabet so they can at least read the titles from the sites.

They a front news agency called Sput Nick that sometimes is as confusing as American main media. Who wants to read Sput Nick or Spit Nick? It is made mostly for their own English readers so they can believe they are not totally isolated. Because they are in the same situations. Fake politicians, fake governments controlling everything.

Why they need this constant tension? Simply to take peoples' mind out of the real problems.

"On the other side are experts who say such warnings are vast exaggerations peddling FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) – that natural disasters and rodents are more of a threat than cyber attacks to industrial control systems (ICS) that power the grid, water distribution, transportation and other critical services.

The evidence – so far – seems to favor the latter view. No cyber attack in the US has crippled the grid, water, communication or other CI systems even for weeks. Indeed, major storms have left tens of thousands of people without power for longer than any cyber attack has."

Rodents. They (CSO) compare cyber threats to rodents. Rats that is.

One more thing. Who ever needed internet as an open, international network? What are 99% of Americans 99% of the time searching in other countries web sites? Nothing.