Re: OT: Traffic Light Control (was Re: First real-world SCADA attack in US)

[Joel jaeggli <joelja () bogus com>]

On 11/22/11 08:16 , Jay Ashworth wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Owen DeLong" <owen () delong com>
>
> > As in all cases, additional flexibility results in additional ability
> > to make mistakes. Simple mechanical lockouts do not scale to the
> > modern world. The benefits of these additional capabilities far
> > outweigh the perceived risks of programming errors.
>
> The perceived risk in this case is "multiple high-speed traffic fatalities".
>
> I believe we rank that pretty high; it's entirely possible that a traffic
> light controller is the most potentially dangerous artifact (in terms of 
> number of possible deaths) that the average citizen interacts with on a 
> daily basis.

Cars generically cause at lot more deaths than faulty traffic
controllers 13.2 per 100,000 population in the US annually.