Need for Cyber Security Exposed by Zombie Apocalypse
Anyone who thinks President Obama is exaggerating the need for improved cyber security to protect the United States may want to keep in mind two words: Zombie Apocalypse.
On the same day as his State of the Union address, President Obama issued an Executive Order—Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity, stating in part:
Repeated cyber intrusions into critical infrastructure demonstrate the need for improved cybersecurity. The cyber threat to critical infrastructure continues to grow and represents one of the most serious national security challenges we must confront. The national and economic security of the United States depends on the reliable functioning of the Nation's critical infrastructure in the face of such threats.
The Department of Homeland Security fact sheet states the Executive Order strengthens the US Government’s partnership with the private sector to address cyber security threats through new information sharing programs, providing both classified and unclassified threat and attack information to US companies and the development of a cyber security framework. Among other features included are privacy and civil liberties protections based on the Fair Information Practice Principles.
To no one’s surprise, reaction to the Executive Order on cyber security was mixed.
Some reported that the order went to far, as from Forbes' "Obama's Cybersecurity Action Reaches Too Far." Others, such as eWeek’s "Obama Cyber-Security Executive Order Lacks Legislative Backbone" and The Christian Science Monitor’s "Why Obama's Executive Order on Cybersecurity Doesn't Satisfy Most Experts", felt it didn’t go far enough.
However, in the realm of you can’t make this up, Emergency Alert Systems in California, Michigan, Montana, and New Mexico have been breached recently, and zombie apocalypse warnings have been sent over airwaves.
The day before President Obama issued the Executive Order, during a KRTV Montana segment where someone is flipping pancakes in what appears to be an infomercial, an emergency alert flashed across the screen:
Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living...Do not attempt to approach or apprehend these bodies as they are considered extremely dangerous...
The Associated Press reports:
The subject matter may be humorous, but Greg MacDonald with the Montana Broadcasters Association said the consequences of such attacks on the alert system could be severe. ‘This looks like somebody being a prankster, but maybe it's somebody testing just to see if they could do this, to do some real damage,’ MacDonald said. ‘Suddenly you create a panic and people are fleeing somewhere and you end up with traffic jams and accidents and who knows what.’
By all accounts, no one was unduly alarmed by the warnings of an impending zombie apocalypse, and mass panic did not ensue—unlike the Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds Halloween radio broadcast. But the fact that hackers could indeed issue zombie apocalypse warnings over public alert systems underscores the need to address cyber security threats on the nation’s infrastructure.
