It’s not Anonymous & Co. but rather squirrels that
are the most successful hackers in the world—
when it comes to so-called critical infrastructure.
This includes a country’s power stations, communication
networks, and other fundamental institutions or facilities.
To date, while hackers can boast of just four successful
cyberattacks of this kind globally, the number of attacks
carried out by squirrels is at least 1,000 times higher.
Nevertheless, it’s criminal human hackers who continue
to dominate the headlines, even though evidence of the
havoc they can wreak is still in short supply. That’s not
the case with squirrels: Fox and gray squirrels carry out
around 300 attacks every year in Austin, Texas, alone.
No one can count all of their attacks—or even make an

estimate— because some of them only last for fractions

of a second and cause a brief fl ickering of lights at most.

But the tiny creatures can also have a big impact: They’ve

shut down the world’s second-largest stock exchange,

the Nasdaq, twice. In Tampa, Florida, a squirrel chewing

wires at a water-treatment facility led to an emergency:

For 37 hours, residents had to boil their tap water before

drinking it. And at an electrical substation in Canada, a

squirrel managed to spark a 5,400°F fi reball, which cut

off electricity to a 96,500-square-mile area for an hour.

“The number one threat experienced to date by the U.S.

electrical grids is squirrels,” according to former Deputy

Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) John Inglis.

But danger doesn’t just lurk in the trees...

ideasanddiscoveries.com 11 Mar 2017