One of the positive peripheral results from the flurry of reactions to the movie, "The Interview" was a short-lived media focus on cyber-terrorism. The recognition of cyber-attacks has been slow to evolve but is gaining traction. In the last major threat assessment document, prepared during the final year of the Bush Administration, the term Cyber Threat was mentioned by name less than ten times. Last year's assessment prepared by the Obama Administration mentioned Cyber Terrorism less than 100 times. The current joint intelligence threat assessment document just released mentioned Cyber Terrorism more than 1000 times. C-SPAN recently televised the briefing to the House Intelligence committee by the NSA and CIA. As redacted as I am sure it was it was still chilling. Malware (most likely introduced by China years ago) has been identified in several locations in the infrastructure for the nation's power grid and water purification and delivery systems. While this specific threat has been neutralized, the idea of a foreign government or other groups planting a latent threat that can be activated when and if the mood strikes is very unsettling. These are not simple annoying denial of service attacks. One of the municipal power generation facilities cooperated with the NSA and permitted activating the malware on one turbine generator control system. The program once activated, took control of the turbine and forced it to run out of safe operating limits until it self-destructed. One can easily imagine the impact on a major city and the entire economy if this or similar incidents were to happen.
