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In a speech last night aboard the USS Intrepid in New York,
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned a meeting of Business Executives for
National Security about the cyber challenges the United States faces.

“A cyber attack
perpetrated by nation states or violent extremist groups could be as
destructive as the terrorist attack of 9/11,” Panetta said. “Such a
destructive cyber terrorist attack could paralyze the nation.”

Panetta recalled a recent attack against the Saudi Arabian
state oil company ARAMCO caused by a computer virus known as “Shamoon” that he described
as “probably
the most destructive attack that the private sector has seen to date.” In
that attack, Secretary Panetta said, the virus self-executed itself and “replaced
crucial system files with an image of a burning U.S. flag. It also put
additional ‘garbage’ data that overwrote all the real data on the machine. The
more than 30,000 computers it infected were rendered useless, and had to be
replaced.”

The challenges create a “profound new
sense of vulnerability,” Panetta noted. “An aggressor
nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail
passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals,” he said. “They could
contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid
across large parts of the country.”

To learn more about America’s cyber challenges, check out
CNAS’s Election 2012 National
Security Guide to the Presidential Election. 

read more

www.cnas.org