Report reveals play-by-play of first U.S. grid cyberattack

https://www.eenews.net/stories/1061111289

by signa11 • 7 years ago

93 27 7 years ago

eenews.net

cracker_jacks2• 7 years ago

Solar energy seems like a great way to decentralize energy infrastructure, making it more robust to attack.

badrabbit6• 7 years ago

Nope,that's just the source. I can imagine overloading the battery farm or downstream distribution lines.

cracker_jacks2• 7 years ago

I'm referring to solar as a distributed energy source. Imagine homes and buildings having their own energy sources.

mensetmanusman• 7 years ago

They still will likely connect to the internet in some form, and sets will have the same attack vulnerabilities that can have passive bot-nets that turn on when needed.

yourad_io• 7 years ago

Recap: An attacker exploited a vulnerability on their firewall that allowed unauthenticated users to reboot. Exploit was public, firewall was unpatched. Unlikely that the attack was targeted, making "cyber-attack" somewhat of a stretch in my book.

badrabbit6• 7 years ago

S/Unlikely/unknown

arcticfox• 7 years ago

s/unknown/unlikely, according to the expert quoted in the piece.

"So far, I don't see any evidence that this was really targeted," said Reid Wightman, senior vulnerability analyst at industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos Inc. "This was probably just an automated bot that was scanning the internet for vulnerable devices, or some script kiddie," he said, using a term for an unskilled hacker.

badrabbit6• 7 years ago

Looks like they just rebooted firewalls.

I wish the lessons learned bullet points explicitly stated that management interfaces should only be accessed from internal bastion hosts (jump boxes). You'd be surprised how rare the practice is. Just getting people to disable internet access is a pain -- "but it has a really good password".

ethbro• 7 years ago

If the federal government wants things to change, they should form an independent red team, running exercises against private companies, and then help companies address issues (the US government leaning on a vendor gets a lot more action than Topeka Electric Coop). With fines to increase the cost of inaction.

The general consensus of reports thus far has been stupid, 101-level mistakes.

And guidelines and recommendations aren't going to help with people who don't read them.

E.g. Staff up NCATS [1], empower them with more binding regulation, and turn them loose to conduct non-requested tests of critical infrastructure

[1] https://www.us-cert.gov/resources/ncats

arkadiyt• 7 years ago

There's a bill in congress (the "Securing Energy Infrastructure Act") that would pilot a program to move the most important control systems to use analog, manual controls.

Text of bill (pdf): https://www.king.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/01-17-19%20Securin...

Article summary: https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-wants-to-isolate-power-grid...

bsder• 7 years ago

Oh, joy. So it can take us days to reboot a grid blackout instead of minutes.

And analog is generally slower on the other end as well. So, if I can create a fast traveling disturbance, I can destroy your equipment before the analog system kicks in.

The problem isn't digital vs analog--it's connecting !@#$ to the Internet that doesn't belong on it.

kylek• 7 years ago

Should've called it the Galactica Act

spsful• 7 years ago

Is anyone else having trouble reading this article? It seems to repeat itself over and over again. Reminds me of this SNL skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQG7PaOE1Mo

gforst• 7 years ago

These attacks seem to be happening more and more (or reporting them more).

The DOE is funding potential solutions, saw this earlier this week

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-energy-department-funds-tr...

Report reveals play-by-play of first U.S. grid cyberattack

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