Can Cyber-Thieves Threaten the Energy Internet?

Cyberattackers present such a threat to the Internet that they could hamper development of new forms of online commerce, including the creation of an energy Internet.

A story in The New York Times on Saturday says cyberattackers are handily winning a technology arms race with vast resources from stolen credit card and other financial information. And, despite efforts by the computer security industry, the situation is getting worse.

That could have an adverse impact on commerce, including the development of smart grid online applications that could be hacked by the bad guys. Here's part of what reporter John Markoff wrote:

Beyond the billions of dollars lost in theft of money and data is another, deeper impact. Many Internet executives fear that basic trust in what has become the foundation of 21st century commerce is rapidly eroding.

“There’s an increasing trend to depend on the Internet for a wide range of applications,many of them having to deal with financial institutions,” said Vinton G. Cerf (left), one of the original designers of the Internet, who is now Google’s chief Internet evangelist.

“The more we depend on these types of systems, the more vulnerable we become,” he said.