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Reading about how a shift worker selected the wrong drop down on his windows PC and caused the Hawaii missile alert false alarm brings up a vulnerability. If hackers wanted to cause havoc NK could launch a real ICBM and then trigger their hack that says it was a faults alarm sending people back into the streets. I have worked in government IT departments not un-common to have very un-secure and way behind on security vulnerabilities patching. Things have gotten better in last number of years with regulated industries like electric power grid, but I would bet warning systems are not regulated at all.
OK. I will get flamed but there is a cultural component to this. Many cultures and subcultures have built in bias against confronting authority. It is not possible to believe that NO ONE did not see this coming. A couple of incorrect keystrokes and you send a nuclear alert? C'mon! Dozens of people on that computer saw the flaw and said nothing. Why? you may ask. Well....confronting authority or raising the alarm can get you in trouble. It's everywhere but certain cultures discourage it. As in the case of MH 370 the 757 was missing for FOUR hours and yet no one said a thing. The answer is cultural and meaningful. We may want to posit and consider that as we look at the picture of the Governor and the responsible supervisor. I know, politically incorrect but it is truthful. In my industry we reverse engineer these potential errors out and we work on it every day....and yes I see the cultural influences cutting out meaningful discussion, decisions and due to this serious problems occur. Sure you can reprogram the computer and put in steps to prevent this in the future...but you cannot encourage people to speak up and then smack em when they do. Every person with half a brain knows that they saw this coming.....and perhaps said nothing...
The world will not come to an end if North Korea is baked in a Dresden-like attack.
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