diagnosed with lung cancer. in a statement, his son scott said, quote, last weekend, my father was diagnosed with a treatable form of lung cancer during a follow-up visit for a bronchial illness. he is currently undergoing treatment and his doctors are optimistic that he will make a full recovery. as everyone can appreciate, this is a deeply personal matter for my parents and we simply ask that his privacy be respected as hi treatment continues. auroo sarah ganham is in state college for us tonight. was there any hint of this at all or is this a complete surprise? >> reporter: well, no, there was no hint of this kind of detail. joe paterno's 84 years old. he's long been speculation about health problems. he's had -- he had kind of like on intestinal bug during the last season. he's been hit a few times either on the sidelines or in practice leading to health problems like broken bones. but as far as his lung cancer news, this is completely -- really a complete shock that this was something that he was dealing with. and apparently according to his family, it was something that he just learned about over the weekend as this scandal has been unfolding. it's really been quite the week for the paterno family. >> it really has, a crushing week for them, i know. sarah, now we know that the ncaa is launching its own investigation into the penn state scandal, how penn state handled things, et cetera, et cetera. what is the implication of that? >> reporter: well, what they want to know is by december 16th, they want certain questions answered about what penn state's policies are, how they comply with ncaa policies and whether or not these rules were followed. and there's a set of questions that they've given to the university. like i said, they need to be answered by the 16th. i think that's when we'll know where we're going from here. >> thank you so much. it isn't just penn state anymore. tonight, another major university, syracuse in new york state, is doing damage control because of allegations of sex abuse. syracuse placed associate men's basketball coach bernie fine on administrative leave after accusation that is he inappropriately touched two boys more than two decades ago. fine just put out a statement saying, quote, simply put, these allegations are patently false in every aspect. the fact is these allegations have been thoroughly investigated multiple times. cnn's ed lavandera is in the university for us now. ed, what has the coach said about these allegations? >> reporter: he is standing by his longtime assistant, jim boeheim, he's been here for more than three decades. as one student put it to us today, jim boeheim is to syracuse what joe paterno is to penn state. he is vehemently defending his assistant coach. this coming in the wake of the allegations that two former ball boys for the syracuse basketball team told espn, you could hear from one of them, one of the men who is now 39 years old, bobby davis, described to espn the interactions that he had with the assistant coach saying that he was molested by the assistant coach hundreds of times during a period covering 16 years, between the 1980s and 1990s. >> first he would start rubbing my leg. he would sit next to me and rub my leg and gradually put his hand down my pants and try to grab my penis. and if i resisted, which i did, he would get more aggressive. >> reporter: bernie fine, the assistant coach s a highly respected, much cared for basketball coach who's been around here at syracuse for many, many decades. he also went on to say in the statement he released this afternoon saying, sadly we live in an allegation-based society and an internet age where in a matter of minutes, one's lifelong reputation can be severely damaged. i am confident that is in the past. a review of his allegations will be discredited and restore my rep pigs. i hope the latest review of these allegation will be conducted expeditiously. he's referring to when this was investigated, brought back up in 2005, it was investigated by the syracuse police department. they said the statute of limitations had run up on this and couldn't investigate it further. the university says it hired a law firm to investigate it and spent four months investigating it. couldn't find any evidence to corroborate what bobby davis was saying at the time. they're confident that bernie fine is someone who has withstood the scrutiny already and they're hoping this case will essentially go away once again. >> ed lavandera, thanks. allegations of sex abuse first at penn state, now at syracuse, no doubt have parents asking about their own children's safety. here to talk about the warning signs and the scandals, marc klaas, his daughter polly was kidnapped and murdered in 1993. and also joining us is a child and adolescent psychologist. one of the things about the situation, he says, we've looked at all this, there was no sub stan -- substantiation of it. that they're looking for money. is it true and do you see an increase in the number of people that come forward at a time when this issue is so much in the news? >> well, sure, because what happens is awareness is raised. that having been said, the numbers of sexual abuse accusations have gone down tremendously since 1993. but, sure, this brings things to the forefront and certain victims show courage in coming forth and talking about things that have been done to them. and that empowers other people that have gone through similar circumstances to take a similar stand. >> dr. sophie, i know that you are in this business, as it were, and certainly know about -- a lot about allegations. is there any way to tell -- i mean, what is the defining moment when you have a "he said, he said"? it seems you do run up against -- it's not true in the penn state allegations where they have a witness that testified before the grand jury, but certainly at penn state, we're now dealing with a "he said, he said" of a now grown adult. how difficult is that to get to the truth? >> it's often very difficult to get to the truth because at a certain point in their life, they were a 10-year-old child and how and what they perceived may be very different now. as they evolved and grow, like was said earlier, maybe they are at a point where they feel more courage, they feel safer, they've been able to resolve within themselves the guilt and the shame and now they want to do something to protect others and feel that they're even protecting themselves. it does have to be a general belief of where that person is. also looking at how their life has been up to this point, have they been a pretty solid citizen, are they a stable person? that gives credibility to who they are and their allegations of today. >> marc, is there any telltale sign that you know of of someone who is a danger to one's child? it seems to me that in the end, the most that a parent can do is certainly be watchful and when something strikes you as wrong, it probably is. but is this more a matter of children speaking to their -- parents speaking to their children about what the danger is or are there telltale signs of bad situations? >> well, certainly the best thing you can do is make sure that your children understand you unconditionally love them and that they can come to you with absolutely anything that is bothering them or threatening their safety. that having been said, sure, there are telltale signs. if an adult spends an inordinate amount of time with children, if they are too good to be true in your life. if they come and they want to ba babysit your kids all the time, they want to take them on unsupervised trips, they want to lavish them with gifts, there's probably something wrong with that. if an adult has a special child friend that changes from time to time, that's another red flag. if you observe any of this kind of aberrant or abnormal behavior, then you definitely need to pay attention to it and take advantage of the tools that are out there. search the megan's law website. find out if this individual does have a past history. >> doctor, we've been told that young children don't offer this information in a lie. in fact, mostly we've come to believe that children will tell the truth. but what about an adult that comes back 25, 30, 35, 40 and says, this happened to me? is there a -- do we also naturally think, no one comes forward with this if it's not true? >> no, i think absolutely you have to take what someone is saying, listen to it, look at the bigger context of who they are as a person, how they live their lives and were those allegations a possibility back at that point in their life? did they have that experience? were they at that camp? did that adult really spend that much time with them to be able to see, are you able to support a lot of those logistical kinds of things and then see, is that somebody who is a solid person that really hasn't had any problem in their life and usually does tell the truth? most likely then at that point, they have worked themselves to an emotional place that they are now safe to come forward and not feel bad about what they need to tell us. >> i need a quick answer from both of you. if you had a young child right now, would you send them off to camp, football or otherwise, because i think that's a question a lot of parents are asking themselves tonight? first quickly to you, doctor. >> i would say, you know what, mom and dad, go check out that camp and follow your gut. >> marc klaas? >> well, you know, president clinton signed the volunteers for children act that allows institutions to run background checks on individuals who have unsupervised access to children. if they followed those strictures, i think you're probably in a good place. >> thanks so much to both of you. we appreciate it. next, troubling revelations that hackers may have staged a dangerous new cyberattack using computers in russia. feel the power my young friend. mmm! [ male announcer ] for unsurpassed fruit and veggie nutrition... v8 v-fusion. could've had a v8. did you hear sam... ...got promoted to director? so 12 seconds ago. we should get him a present. thanks for the gift basket. you're welcome. you're welcome. did you see hr just sent out new... ...office rules? cause you're currently in violation of 6 of them. oh yeah, baby? ...and 7. did you guys hear that fred is leaving? so 30 seconds ago. [ noisemakers blow ] [ both ] we'll miss you! oh, facecake! there's some leftover cake. [ male announcer ] the new htc vivid. stay a step ahead with at&t 4g lte, with speeds up to 10x faster than 3g. ♪ at bank of america, we're lending and investing in communities across the country, from helping to revitalize a neighborhood in brooklyn to financing industries that are creating jobs in boston or providing funding for the expansion of a local business serving a diverse seattle community and supporting training programs for tomorrow's workforce in los angeles. because the more we can do in local neighborhoods and communities, the more we can help make opportunity possible. one of the greatest fears about terrorism may be a reality tonight. a cyber attack on a vital public utility. federal investigators confirmed they are gathering information on whether hackers, possibly from russia, are to blame for a breakdown at a public water system in illinois. here's cnn's brian todd. >> reporter: it's been unheard of inside the u.s., hackers compromising infrastructure. now federal officials confirm they're investigating whether a cyber attack may have led to the failure of a water pump at a public water system in the springfield, illinois, area earlier this month. a local official discussed the incident. >> there's some indication that there was a breach of some sort into a software program. >> reporter: cyber security expert joe weiss disclosed the possible hagging on his blog after he obtained a government report from the state of illinois's terrorism and intelligence center. we asked weiss what the report said about the incident when he says hackers breached the so-called scata system, the tech controls of water pump machines. >> when the scata system was showing abnormal problems, they called in an i.t. company to check out the computer. and in the process of checking out the computer, in other words, the computer logs of the computer, they found i.p. addresses that were located in russia. >> reporter: contacted by cnn, the department of homeland security said it's looking into all of this. but dhs cautions it hasn't reached any conclusions about whether the pump was damaged by hackers or something else. >> joe weiss joins us now along with mark rash who used to lead the justice department's computer crime prosecution unit. let me start with you, first, mark. when you hear this story, do you automatically go to hacking? >> well, that's the first thing you're going to look at, especially when you have this indication that there's been these i.p. addresses or these attacks from a particular address coming from russia. what you start looking at is, did these come from an attack and did these come from a foreign government or a foreign country? >> joe, how is it -- we now know that the feds are looking into this. you were the first actually to report it on your blog, as i understand it. what is the lesson here? what do i take away from this? what should viewers take away from this? >> well, the first thing is that these systems are systems that really weren't designed for security. and they also don't have the conventional logging that a traditional i.t. system would have. so one of the first things to take away from this is that it can take a long time and you can only, if you will, unintentionally stumble on to the fact that there are people trying to hack into these. one of the things that came out is there were problems with this system for two to three months before they found it. >> and so we do know that joe has been a frequent critic of homeland security. we're talking about water supply in the u.s., electricity, any number of things. is the fear real? is the system as vulnerable as it sounds? and what's, then, the real threat, that someone could literally stop the water supply in the u.s.? >> there's no doubt that there are a lot of vulnerabilities in these so-called scata systems. the scata systems are what control things like water, power, utilities. they were never designed to be networked together. but for convenience, we networked them together without fixing them. we definitely have to address that issue and we are addressing the issue in the country but we're not addressing it fast enough or as thoroughly enough. the real harm here is that if somebody can take over a scata system, they can cause a lot of physical damage, which is hard to do in cyberspace. shut down water plants and electropower grids. >> joe, you think this hacking came from russia. can you go the next step with me and say, is this a practice run? is this a -- it seems to me, there are many possibilities. somebody kind of messing around seeing what they could do. is there a way that they know what they did, that they were able to burn out a pump by turning it on and off, or is it a practice run? >> well, i'm an engineer and i can tell you what things are -- you're asking me to speculate and i can tell you what my speculation is. >> thank you. i'll go with that. >> okay. the first point is these are a bunch of very small, small water districts. normally -- and these are also districts that would have very little security and very little logging. so my feeling is, yeah, this is probably some form of test run because they didn't want to go after bigger, if you will, more instrumented systems. but the other thing -- i was just going to say one other thing. this also strikes me as, in a sense, the rsa attack against control systems because what they did is they went to the scata vendor, software vendor, and they got the user id and passwords from the systems that this vendor provided. so this was a very targeted attack to go after very specific machines and a lot more than just one. >> and so they meant to do it. >> they meant to do it. >> let me read where the department of homeland security told cnn, quote, at this time, there is no credible, corroborated data that indicates a risk to infrastructure entities or a threat to public safety. seems to me they're playing it down. obviously that's their opinion, one hope that is they're not actually playing it down. but why would they? they don't seem to see the threat that we're talking about here. >> the investigation is in its early days. one of the problems is that they only have this one report, although there was another report today coming out of houston as well. the real harm here is not that somebody did this. it's that the systems are vulnerable to these kinds of attacks. as joe pointed out f you grab the user id and password from the manufacturer, you can go after many, many different systems. we need a better way of sharing information and a better way of encouraging the companies that have these scata systems to really lock them down and monitor them, whether you're a huge company or a small municipality. >> mark, joe, thank you so much tonight. next up, washington's deficit cutting wars, it's your money, trillions of dollars and an all-important deadline is just around the corner. congratulations. congratulations. congratulations. today, the city of charlotte can use verizon technology to inspire businesses to conserve energy and monitor costs. making communities greener... congratulations. ... and buildings as valuable to the bottom line... whoa ! ... as the people inside them. congratulations. because when you add verizon to your company, you don't just add, you multiply. ♪ discover something new... verizon. gives you the lowest plan premium in the country... so you can focus on what really matters. call humana at 1-800-808-4003. of course, neither do i. solution? td ameritrade mobile trader. i can enter trades on the run. even futures and 4x. complex options, done. the market shifts, i get an alert. [ cellphone rings ] thank you. live streaming audio. advanced charts. look at that. all right here. wherever "here" happens to be. mobile trading from td ameritrade. number one in online equity trades. [ male announcer ] trade commission-free for 60 days. plus get up to $600 when you open an account. on capitol hill today -- and this is going to surprise you -- it's been all talk and no results. the house of representatives failed to pass a balanced budget amendment to the constitution. members of all-powerful super committee huddled behind closed door amid growing pessimism they'll make a deal on wednesday by cutting $1.2 trillion from the deficit. ed rollins is in new york and with me in washington is paul begala and gloria borger. ed, first to you, they're not going to make this, right? is there new york pessimism as well as washington pessimism? >> i don't see any signs whatsoever. republicans don't want to raise taxes. democrats don't want to cut entitlement programs. it's where we were six months ago. i think most of them think, we'll go through an election, see where it comes out, we'll make whatever adjustments we have to so the defense and entitlements won't take the big cut. at this point, there will be a turkey on thanksgiving and a turkey in washington but it won't be a bill. >> are you both as pessimistic? >> yes. >> yes. >> then i can go on to say, what in the world -- i love this that we're going to let an election decide it. every time we have an election, we still are going to get divided government. >> right. >> it seems to me, we are now playing with, at least we were told, oh, my goodness, the world markets will go crazy, no one's going to trust washington, it will thrust us into a second recession. they don't seem to think that's g