Terrorist Backhoe Attack

By Kevin Poulsen

In 2004, Department of Homeland Security officials became fearful that terrorists might start using accidental dig-ups as a road map for deliberate attacks, and convinced the FCC to begin locking up previously public data on outages. In a commission filing, DHS argued successfully that revealing the details of "even a single event may present a grave risk to the infrastructure."

"We see people talking about the digital Pearl Harbor from the worms and Trojans and viruses," says Howard Schmidt, former White House cybersecurity adviser. "But in all probability, there's more likelihood of what we call the 'backhoe attack' that would have more impact on a region then a Code Red, or anything we've seen so far."

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