After the Boston Marathon massacre, it was discovered that seven students from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Singapore had been trespassing at Quabbin Reservoir, Boston's main water supply source. Police reported that there were no signs of terrorist activity and gave the seven students slaps on the wrist and let them go.
Now it is being reported that the locks on three access hatches to the Boston Water Supply Aqueduct had been cut off, and evidence suggests that a fourth lock was tampered with also. The story is here.
The authorities are quick to say that the water had not been tampered with, and was completely safe to drink.
But this goes further to underscore what I have been saying about critical infrastructure security. We are not looking at only cyber issues. We are also looking at physical issues.
While I quite agree that it is very difficult, maybe impossible, to put enough chemical or biochemical agent into the Quabbin Reservoir to affect the population of Boston, it may not be all that hard to do it to the Aqueduct. After all, the Aqueduct is a flowing stream of water, and the problem then becomes one of flow proportional dosage.
If we lose sight of the fact that we may be looking at multiple attack vectors and wave attacks, we open ourselves to them. The Boston bombers understood wave attacks. They set off one bomb, and waited until people approached the injured and set off the other one, thus getting more injured and dead.
This ought to set off a buying frenzy for microfiltration, ultrafiltration and activated carbon adsorbtion filtration systems for homes and offices. Or maybe not.
We have been seeing ostrich behavior for so long that I'm not sure anybody really believes that what I'm talking about might actually happen.
We will see.
