Invisible threats to your industrial systems: Beware, Be prepared, Be resilient
From the outside, everything looked normal. Deep inside the computer system of a petrochemical plant, hackers were quietly attacking its online system after breaching firewalls, cracking security code, and then wandering into virtual networks to discover the production control levers. After a few attempts, they found a loophole and managed to disable the safety valves, triggering gas leaks that led to an explosion, destroying the plant and variously affecting the surrounding areas.
This is just the scenario of a near tragedy. Fortunately it did not happen, but it illustrates at least one known case where it came close! What prevented the drama was not a safety mechanism but a simple error code.
