OT: Traffic Light Control (was Re: First real-world SCADA attack in US)

Jay Ashworth jra at baylink.com
Tue Nov 22 16:16:54 UTC 2011


----- Original Message -----
> From: "Owen DeLong" <owen at delong.com>

> As in all cases, additional flexibility results in additional ability
> to make mistakes. Simple mechanical lockouts do not scale to the
> modern world. The benefits of these additional capabilities far
> outweigh the perceived risks of programming errors.

The perceived risk in this case is "multiple high-speed traffic fatalities".

I believe we rank that pretty high; it's entirely possible that a traffic
light controller is the most potentially dangerous artifact (in terms of 
number of possible deaths) that the average citizen interacts with on a 
daily basis.
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com         2000 Land Rover DII
St Petersburg FL USA      http://photo.imageinc.us             +1 727 647 1274




More information about the NANOG mailing list