Basically, no one wanted to bear all the costs of having secure infrastructure components, this is the tragedy of the commons that government is supposed to solve, but when all the leaders are over 70, it’s hard for them to grok the new reality.
If you have a dedicated hacker with means to acquire exploits, security is probably almost impossible. This is why effective mitigation is very likely the safer approach. Manual overrides or air gapped systems would help too.
But it is wrong to panic about it. The best mitigation is boring, but yes, some investment in IT could really help.
So not an actual event.
Ukraine has been subjected to Russian cyberattacks for nearly a decade now. They’ve accomplished knocking the power off multiple times. It would seem the gun exists.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine they could have some success with cyberattacks against the US. How impactful that would be to disrupting day to day life though is a question that remains to be answered. When the power was out in Texas recently, there was quite an impact. Imagine millions losing power in the rust belt in the winter. There would no doubt be loss of life and significant physical damage.
I wish. The gas pipeline shutdown last year was just a rehearsal I imagine. If the Russian government went full send on a cyber attack, we would probably be completely fucked for months at this point.
Cyber crimes with significant impact are still in the realm of fiction. Scare mongering about it does not help.
That said, one should not make stupid decision how to connect and control such infrastructure and you should prepare with working backups instead of another security product.