{"id":19126,"date":"2017-11-27T21:04:33","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T21:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/uncategorized\/2017\/11\/27\/could-an-air-conditioner-take-down-a-military-base-the-pentagon-is-worried\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:03:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:03:33","slug":"could-an-air-conditioner-take-down-a-military-base-the-pentagon-is-worried","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/home\/2017\/11\/27\/could-an-air-conditioner-take-down-a-military-base-the-pentagon-is-worried\/","title":{"rendered":"Could an air conditioner take down a military base? The Pentagon is worried"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2015 The Pentagon is looking to take steps against the possibility that a cyberattack could take down the crucial infrastructure at its bases, both domestically and overseas, per a top department official.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lucian Niemeyer, assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment, said over the next year his team will be focused on finding solutions to potential vulnerabilities in the industrial control systems \u2015 the devices that control major pieces of equipment such as air conditioning units \u2015 throughout military installations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy concern is, I never want to be in front of the secretary of defense explaining why we could not conduct a critical mission because they happened to go in through a system in my purview,\u201d he told Defense News in a November interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Niemeyer pointed to the December 2013 hack of retail giant Target, where almost 40 million credit card users\u2019 information was stolen, as an example of how industrial control systems are increasingly a target. The backdoor the hackers used to get to the information was through a third-party HVAC contractor, which had access to network credentials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked if there had been cyberattacks using similar methods against DoD, Niemeyer said, \u201cI don\u2019t know anything I can talk about in public,\u201d but noted such concerns have become widespread in the last several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pentagon\u2019s concerns go beyond the ability of hackers to access sensitive data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 2013 incident, an Iranian national attempted to take control of the Bowman Avenue Dam in Rye Brook, N.Y. He was able to access the network that would normally allow him to control the dam, but by chance the gate controls were not connected at the time. In a more recent case, a large chunk of Ukraine\u2019s power grid was shut down by a cyberattack in late 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\t