Short Takes – 12-14-24

Internet-Exposed HMIs Pose Cybersecurity Risks to Water and Wastewater Systems. CISA.gov fact sheet. Pull quote: “In the absence of cybersecurity controls, threat actors can exploit exposed HMIs at WWS Sector utilities to view the contents of the HMI, make unauthorized changes, and potentially disrupt the facility’s water and/or wastewater treatment process. CISA strongly encourages WWS Sector organizations review and implement the mitigations in this fact sheet to harden remote access to HMIs.”

Why the US Military Can't Just Shoot Down the Mystery Drones. Wired.com article. Pull quote: ““I would point out that restricted airspace will do nothing to stop an adversarial attack and even the detection systems identified earlier in this email chain have limited success rates, and there is even lower likelihood that law enforcement will arrive quickly enough to actually engage with the pilots,” one senior NRC security official at Palo Verde wrote in an email regarding the incident. “We should be focusing our attention on getting Federal regulations and laws changed to allow sites to be defended and to identify engineering fixes that would mitigate an adversarial attack before there our [sic] licensed facilities become vulnerable.””

Bird flu jumps from birds to human in Louisiana; patient hospitalized. ArsTechnica.com article. Pull quote: “Influenza viruses are also able to swap genetic segments with each other in a process called reassortment. As flu season begins in the US, a nightmare scenario that experts have raised is if H5N1 swaps segments with the seasonal flu, creating a new, potentially deadly virus with pandemic potential.  For this to happen, a person would have to be infected with the two types of influenza viruses at the same time—something health officials have feared could happen in dairy or poultry workers as the outbreaks continue.”

Russia’s War Economy Is Hitting Its Limits.  ForeignPolicy.com article. Pull quote: “Concluding a peace agreement, however, poses a different set of problems, as the Kremlin needs to choose between three unpalatable options. If it draws down the armed forces and defense industries, it will spark a recession that could threaten the regime. If Russian policymakers instead maintain high levels of defense spending and a bloated peacetime military, it will asphyxiate the Russian economy, crowding out civilian industry, and stifle growth. Having experienced the Soviet Union’s decline and fall for similar economic reasons, Russian leaders will probably seek to avoid this fate.”