Political Quotes

“Mr. President, at 3:30 in the afternoon on December 23 of last year, about a half hour before sunset, the lights started to go out in western Ukraine. The power started to go out. The operator in one of the Ukrainian powerplants noticed, to his horror, that he no longer controlled the cursor on his computer screen. The cursor moved of its own accord and started opening dialogue boxes and opening breakers. The operator tried frantically to get back into the computer, only to find he was locked out and the password had been changed. At the same time, the call center of this utility in Ukraine was blocked by thousands of fake calls, so the utility itself could not know what was happening in the countryside. The backup generators around western Ukraine also went down. Malware was installed on the operating computers and a system called KillDisk was installed, which wiped the disks and rendered the computers useless. As a final insult, the power in the power control system itself went off and the operators were literally left in the dark. This was the first major cyber attack of a public utility anywhere in the world. It was sophisticated, it was well planned, and it was devastating. Within a few minutes, 230,000 people in the country of Ukraine were without power. That attack could have occurred in Kansas City, in San Jose, in New York, or here in Washington.…”