Nuclear Power Plant Meltdown
Scenario: The Surry Nuclear Power Station is located in southeastern Virginia, on the south bank of the James River across from historic Jamestown. It is also located adjacent to the Hog Island Wildlife Management Area, a state-maintained property (1). Its current capacity is 40% of Chernobyl’s was during operation(2). A rogue group of hackers called “FireG8” target the station for the following reasons: workers are lax in their application of cybersecurity and the power plant’s hardware, and software has not been updated for several years. FireG8 first sends out various phishing emails to the employees, equipped with the necessary spyware and a trojan virus that will create a backdoor entrance to the LA Network. Enough of the workers fall for the bait, that they soon have a firm grip in the LAN. When FireG8 has collected the information they require, they access the station’s SCADA. They attack the power station’s network, shutting down the coolant system. Simultaneously, FireG8 sends fake coolant system readings, fooling to the SCADA system’s data acquisition. Any backup warnings are also silenced, via access to the alarm systems. By the time workers realize there’s a problem, the steps toward nuclear meltdown cannot be reversed…
Impacted:
- Workers (death)
- Surrounding Civilians (over 500k displaced(potentially life threatening illness))
- Environmental Damages
- Evacuated Zone (Uninhabitable) including(3):
- Norfolk
- Jamestown
- Williamsburg
- Newport News
- Surry
Potential Prevention Method
- Cyber-security training for all workers
- Have a better back-up system
- Never have all the systems on one network: if that one network goes down, disaster strikes
- Always review and update your cybersecurity: technology changes fast. Keep up, or be vulnerable
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