Cyberwar: are we facing a "cyber Pearl Harbor" that could wreak havoc on our computer networks--and our lives?

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

The hackers picked the one day of the year they knew they could inflict the most damage on the world's most valuable company: Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, valued at an estimated $7 trillion. They knew that last August 15, more than 55,000 Saudi Aramco employees would be at home preparing for a Muslim holiday. So that morning, at 11:08, a computer virus began erasing data on 75 percent of Aramco's corporate PCs--documents, spreadsheets, e-mails, files--replacing everything with an image of a burning American flag.

U.S. intelligence officials say Iran was behind the attack.

By the time the virus was stopped, it had infected and made useless more than 30,000 computers. It had also sent a stark message to other nations, including the U.S., about just how vulnerable the world is to cyberattack.

"It proved you don't have to be sophisticated to do a lot of damage," says Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism official. "There are lots of targets in the U.S. where they could do the same thing. The attacks were intended to say: 'If you mess with us, you can expect retaliation.'"

Washington is worried. In October, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned that the United States is facing the possibility of a "cyber Pearl Harbor." The U.S. is increasingly vulnerable, he said, to foreign computer hackers who could dismantle the nation's power grid, transportation systems, financial networks, and government.

"An aggressor nation or extremist group could use these kinds of cybertools to gain control of critical switches," Panetta said. "They could derail passenger trains, or even more dangerous, derail passenger trains loaded with lethal chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country."

The biggest sources of cyberwar concern are Iran and China. Chinese hackers, many thought to be working with at least the consent of China's government, are believed to attack America's computer systems daily. Mostly, they try to steal corporate and Pentagon secrets rather than inflict damage. Iran, on the other hand, is trying to do damage. American intelligence officials believe Iran, in addition to being responsible for the cyberattack on Saudi Aramco, engineered computer attacks that in September intermittently took offline some of America's largest banks--including Wells Fargo and PNC--and disrupted the online banking websites of Capital One and BB&T.

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