McAfee: Attacks against critical infrastructure on the rise

The firm sent a survey to 200 IT departments, representing utility companies in fourteen countries around the globe, and found that eight out of ten claimed their systems had been attacked within the previous twelve months -- a 40 percent rise in just two years.

One of most high profile cyber attacks on an industrial system was the 2010 Stuxnet worm which was targeted at Iran speculated to originate from the United States and Israel. Luckily there was no damage caused however, considering it was target a nuclear power station, it was claimed that the intention of the application was to "circumvent digital data systems, so the human operator could not get there fast enough."