CEO of Counter Hack and SANS instructor Ed Skoudis may have been playful with his Lord of the Rings reference during his 2013 RSA Conference presentation, but the attack techniques that he and Johannes Ullrich, chief research officer at the SANS Internet Storm Center, discussed are anything but a joking matter. During a joint presentation last week, the duo detailed how everything from industrial control systems to SCADA equipment to big financial institutions is vulnerable to society-shaking attacks. He pointed to recent attacks, including Stuxnet, Flame and Shamoon, to show that nation-states and criminal organizations are increasingly looking at hacking via cyberattacks as a way to break physical systems that are vital to the way society functions.