The agenda at a secretive conference on protecting critical infrastructure from computer attack was curtailed at the last minute last week, underscoring the legal challenges of sharing such information, much less getting companies to respond to it. Two talks about a nuclear power plant's potential vulnerabilities to cyber-attack were canceled after an equipment supplier threatened to sue, organizers said, even though plant officials had approved the presentations. The vendor complained that the talks would have revealed too much information about its own gear. Conference participants were also told that a security firm that had uncovered the thousands of pieces of control equipment exposed to online attacks did not tell U.S. authorities where they were installed because it feared being sued by the equipment owners. In addition, attendees said they were alarmed to learn that because the government has kept a technique it discovered for attacking electricity generation equipment
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