Short Takes – 2-9-23

There’s a Ring Around This Dwarf Planet. It Shouldn’t Be There. NYTimes.com article. Pull quote: “For a long time, astronomers thought asteroids and other small bodies were too small to have companions like moons and rings. But in the past few decades, they discovered moons around many asteroids and Kuiper belt objects. They then spotted rings — essentially moons that failed to coalesce — around smaller objects.”

5 Cybersecurity Questions for Eric Byres. ChemicalProcessing.com article. Good interview on chemical facility cybersecurity. Pull quote: “Chemical processing has a double risk because ransomware attackers could either threaten to shut down the process (like Colonial) or cause some sort of human or environmental impact. The scary thing is that the attackers don't have to succeed; they just have to show that they're inside the OT system and have a reasonable shot of causing an incident like a spill. So chemical companies are facing a bit more risk than say your average manufacturing business.”

Internal Network Security Monitoring for High and Medium Impact Bulk Electric System Cyber Systems. Federal Register, FERC Final Action. NPRM was published in January. Summary: “The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission) is directing the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to develop and submit within 15 months of the effective date of this final action for Commission approval new or modified Reliability Standards that require internal network security monitoring within a trusted Critical Infrastructure Protection networked environment for all high impact bulk electric system (BES) Cyber Systems with and without external routable connectivity and medium impact BES Cyber Systems with external routable connectivity. In addition, the Commission directs NERC to perform a study of all low impact BES Cyber Systems with and without external routable connectivity and medium impact BES Cyber Systems without external routable connectivity, as set forth in the final action, and to submit its study report to the Commission within 12 months of the issuance of this final action.”

China’s Bid to Improve Food Production? Giant Towers of Pigs. NYTimes.com article. I wonder how much automation is involved… Pull quote: “Feed is carried on a conveyor belt to the top floor, where it’s collected in giant tanks that deliver more than one million pounds of food a day to the floors below through high-tech feeding troughs that automatically dispense the meal to the hogs based on their stage of life, weight and health.”