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CIA Claims Cyber Attackers Blacked Out Cities
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sat Jan 19, 2008 03:19 AM
from the say-g'night-dick dept.
from the say-g'night-dick dept.
Dotnaught writes to tell us InformationWeek is reporting that the CIA admitted today that recent power outages in multiple cities outside the United States are the result of cyberattacks. "We have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands. We suspect, but cannot confirm, that some of these attackers had the benefit of inside knowledge. We have information that cyberattacks have been used to disrupt power equipment in several regions outside the United States. In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities. We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet."
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Why are systems like this hooked onto the internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why are systems like this hooked onto the inter (Score:4, Insightful)
It takes only a single breach. The story mentioned it may be an inside job, which means somebody may have put a single little link between the two systems, breaking the separation.
Re:Why are systems like this hooked onto the inter (Score:5, Informative)
Given the nature of how the internet works, having a dial-up line to a management console (who then requires authentication) is much better for OOB management than using the Internet.
OOB management isn't a panacea (Score:4, Informative)
Re:OOB management isn't a panacea (Score:4, Interesting)
It's been a looooong time since companies were interested in the best possible solution, these days when something like only making a 25% profit instead of a 27% profit can cause emotional investors to dump your stock, dropping the price, and causing your company a loss of net worth in the millions, they're mostly interested in just spending the least amount that they can.
Re:Why are systems like this hooked onto the inter (Score:5, Interesting)
1. There may be situations where the systems need to be remotely administered, and using the Internet is a much, much cheaper way to facilitate this than deploying a completely private network infrastructure just for this purpose, which probably isn't very practical (for both physical and financial reasons).
2. pr0n browsing.
Option 2 may cut into their profits a bit though
I haven't read TFA yet, but an attack from the Internet should *never* happen to something as important as this.
Where I work, we have an In-Confidence network and some Protected stuff. Each level is ONLY allowed to connect to ONE level lower and then only via approved security mechanisms. So the In-Confidence can access the (Unclassified) Internet, but the Protected stuff can't talk to the Internet at all. Actually in our case we don't bother connecting the Protected stuff even to our In-Confidence network.
I would assume a power control system would be much higher security than In-Confidence (that's pretty low - any decent business should be at least that level in reality), and thus not allowed to talk to the Unclassified Internet.
This of course is for Government networks. The US power companies (as are most in Australia) are privately owned, so they don't have to worry about such trivial things as security rules.
On a side note, I'm constantly amazed at the expectation of vendors and PHBs that we will automatically open up our network so that some stray vendor can remotely debug their dodgy application. Yea sure, we'll let you in from your totally unknown network that has only knows what security holes and stuff going on inside it to access our server(s) with elevated privileges. Especially when everyone working in our IT department has gone through a security clearance, and they have whoever they snagged off the street.
Actually I've just had a look at TFA, and it doesn't have any sort of details on what / where (not USA) / when (well vaguely - recently) / why (profit ???) / how these attacks occurred.
willful negligence vs gross negligence (Score:5, Funny)
And if MS Windows is involved, then it escalates to willful negligence.
Re:Why are systems like this hooked onto the inter (Score:4, Informative)
Damn skippy. When I worked as a SCADA dev, we had one (1) machine connected to the internet, in a locked room. If you wanted to move something from there to a machine on the LAN, you did it by burning CDs, and the culture (rather than just the 'procedures') was genuinely against installing anything that wasn't absolutely necessary. Nobody outside of IT had admin access to their desktops.
That was our dev house procedures though. As you say, it all falls apart on the production systems. Once customers started using commodity Windows boxes, it was all over. We found one production box where the night watchman had hacksawed off the padlock on the back, opened it up and installed a sound card so that he could play games on it, presumably by plugging an optical drive in for the duration. It was pwoned by his warez and needed a brain wipe. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Just in time... (Score:3, Informative)
Die Hard 4.0 (Score:4, Funny)
At least if there is a firesale Justin Long and Bruce Willis will be there to save us. Coincidence that Mac Guy would be the one to save us? I think not.
Where and When? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Where and When? (Score:4, Funny)
Why not use air-gap firewalls? (Score:3, Insightful)
Where does this idea that every computer that exists must be plugged into the net come from?
Something smells. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now add the fact that the US Director of National Intelligence has indicated that he wants to obtain the ability to monitor all Internet traffic data [arstechnica.com]:
Contrast this with a second Ars article from yesterday, where the US Federal Energy Regulation Commission has just approved new security regulations [arstechnica.com] for the organizations (mostly private) that run the US electrical grid. Rather than blaming evil foreign hackers, Ars reports that:
This all just sounds like an excuse to install packet loggers everywhere.
(And it's not just the US authorities who want to lock down and control the Internet; the UK also recently indicated a desire to install censorship devices at the ISP level [theregister.co.uk]. Good luck with that.)
We don't have TIME!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:We don't have TIME!!! (Score:4, Funny)
This is really serious! (Score:3, Insightful)
BS (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think so (Score:5, Interesting)
Pfffft (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pfffft (Score:4, Funny)
At least when they do cut out, the residual power left in the system enables you to submit your incomplete slashdot message posting. What an age to be alive!
Better news report (Score:5, Informative)
Re:15% solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:TFA is leaving out the most important informati (Score:5, Informative)