infrastructure

Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde thinks we drive on dumb roads. So he teamed with mega European construction company Heijmans Infrastructure to create a vision of a "smart highway" for the Netherlands -- and possibly the rest of the world.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of these future roads is the fact that two concepts of the bunch -- glow-in-the-dark roads and dynamic paint -- should arrive by mid-2013. The group plans to introduce the rest of the concepts before 2015, giving the world a glimpse at how technology could revolutionize the way we drive by making it a safer and more sustainable experience. … Read more

Federal regulators charged with overseeing the reliability of the electrical grid expressed concerns about proposed cybersecurity standards and warned that existing law may not protect "against fast-moving cybersecurity threats."

Yesterday's statement from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission came in a response to pointed questions from two senators, Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and Susan Collins (R-ME), the panel's senior Republican. The senators made their inquiries in July, a few weeks after CNET published an article on the topic.

Lieberman and Collins had asked for an "expeditious comprehensive investigation" … Read more

A Democrat-backed cybersecurity measure that the Obama administration calls necessary to protect the nation's infrastructure was blocked by Republicans opposed to what they considered to be undue regulation.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 needed 60 votes to move to a vote by the full Senate, thanks to a Republican filibuster of the measure. It mustered only 52 votes in favor, which in the Senate's upside down world allowed a minority of 46 opponents to defeat the measure. The vote mostly fell along party lines, according to Bloomberg. Senate Democrats had hoped to have a vote on the measure … Read more

Two U.S. senators are calling for a federal investigation of the power grid's potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities after a CNET article last month raised security concerns.

The request for a probe comes from Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and Susan Collins (R-ME), the panel's senior Republican, who warned that lapses "could undermine part of the security system protecting our grid."

They sent a letter yesterday to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asking for an "expeditious comprehensive investigation into these allegations," which deal with digital signatures the industry … Read more

Talk has been circulating recently about Google building an Infrastructure as a Service cloud computing platform in the near future. Now, GigaOM is reporting that it's possible the Web giant could be launching this service as soon as next week during the Google I/O developers' conference in San Francisco.

The tech news site is also saying that several people familiar with Google's plans have confirmed that Google will offer its current App Engine and storage with its forthcoming service.

The Web giant's platform will most likely compete with Amazon's EC2 cloud service, but it could … Read more

Security technology used by U.S. electric utilities is flawed and could increase the odds of computer intrusions or sabotage, the chairman of an industry standards group warns.

Jesse Hurley, co-chair of the North American Energy Standards Board's Critical Infrastructure Committee, says the mechanism for creating digital signatures for authentication is insufficiently secure because not enough is being done to verify identities and some companies are attempting to weaken standards to fit their business models.

"These certificates protect access to control systems," Hurley told CNET. "They protect access to a $400 billion market. They protect access … Read more

U.S. gas pipeline operators have been targeted in sophisticated phishing attacks since at least December, with the Department of Homeland Security helping firms deal with the incidents since March, the DHS and an industry expert said.

"DHS's Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team has been working since March 2012 with critical infrastructure owners and operators in the oil and natural gas sector to address a series of cyber intrusions targeting natural gas pipeline companies," DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard said in an e-mail sent to CNET today.

"The cyber intrusion involves sophisticated spear-phishing activities targeting … Read more

My wife works for our local school department as an IT support specialist assigned to the town's largest elementary school. Like many U.S. elementary schools, kids and teachers use a variety of personal computing devices, including PCs, notebooks, and now tablets. (Everyone wants to use these 'cause they're way cool.)

Keeping this veritable Noah's ark full of computing animals happy is more than a full-time job. There are more than 400 of them and they have quirks that give most of them unique personalities. If she comes home and tells me she had time for lunch, … Read more

Stuxnet took the world by storm two years ago.

The worm was different from previous viruses: it wasn't designed to steal money, identities, or passwords. Instead, the malware targeted the controls at industrial facilities such as power plants, inspiring talk of a top secret, government-sponsored cyberwar.

At the time of its discovery in June 2010, the assumption was that espionage lay behind the effort, but subsequent analysis uncovered the ability of the malware to control plant operations outright--specifically an Iranian nuclear facility.

In addition to showing that a cyberattack could cause significant physical damage to a facility, it also … Read more