Physical risks of cybervulnerabilities

Ransomware attacks dominate the headlines. They are a major urban cybersecurity concern. Hackers have held hundreds of cities' administrative IT systems hostage in return for bitcoin and other untraceable digital currency payments.

However, there are increasing concerns of attacks on IoT networks and other embedded systems that could cause signficant physical damage and potential loss of life. In 2020, it was reported that a 2007 federal cybersecurity project demonstrated an attack used to physically disable a power plant generator remarkably similar to one used a decade later in Ukraine. Its seems likely that these types of cyber-munitions are now fairly widely available for state and potentially non-state actors and may become more so in the next decade, triggering an arms race of more potent measures and countermeasures.

As the US embarks on a large-scale infrastructure campaign, this suggests a need for increased innovation, vigilance, and spending to patch existing holes and detect and defend against new and varied and more intense types of threats.