Cyberattacks that cause major disruption to public services have happened many times in the real world.
Some of them are very old news, in fact. But it’s easy to imagine how a similar attack could shut down basic services, like electricity or water, that affect millions of people.
In 2000, a disgruntled sewage treatment plant worker in Queensland, Australia hacked into his employer’s industrial control system to unleash torrents of raw sewage onto public grounds, flooding the city’s local Hyatt hotel. The perpetrator was sentenced to two years for the attack.
In 2007, the country of Estonia was subject to widespread outages in its entire telecommunications network, following a cyberattack stemming from a dispute with Russia over a military statue. The incident was so damaging, it led to a decision to place the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Cyber Security organization in Tallinn, the country’s capital.
In 2015,…
