The massive, smoking electrical turbine spinning out of control is an image you won't forget, and that's the hope of government researchers who made this dramatization of hackers taking over the SCADA systems that run the nation's power grid.

Security experts long have pointed to weaknesses in the older SCADA systems that run water, chemical, and electric utilities, but this very graphic simulation provides an in-your-face look at just what an attacker could do. The dramatization, shown in a video made for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and obtained by the Associated Press yesterday, was reportedly made by researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory for government officials.

— Kelly Jackson Higgins, Senior Editor, Dark Reading