Hackers can easily take control of construction cranes

Researchers working for Japanese cybersecurity company Trend Micro were able to take control of construction cranes with surprising ease, according to a report in Forbes.

The researchers set up simple, cheap cyber attacks by hacking into the communications between the controllers and the cranes. They were able to take control over the equipment after discovering that the data packets containing commands were often transported over the air with little to no security.

The exercise, which involved 14 different cranes, proved the vulnerability of the equipment to theft, extortion, and sabotage. Unless manufacturers secured their technology, the potential for catastrophic damage was very real, the researchers say.

Security fixes have been rolled out over the last year, Forbes reported, though some flaws have been left open.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.