CIA Claims Cyber Attackers Blacked Out Cities

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."

Where and When?

[imemyself]

I actually did skim the article, but I didn't see anything pertaining to when these attacks/outages happened or where (other than outside the US). Does anyone have an idea about what power outages they are refering to?

Re:Where and When?

[FriendSite.com]

We had power outages here in Vancouver, various blocks went out... but it was reported in the media that it was due to the high winds... hmmm, strange that only a few random blocks downtown were affected?

Something smells.

[David McBride]

Why are we hearing about this from the CIA, of all places? I thought counter-intelligence was the purview of the FBI, and signals intelligence the role of the NSA.

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]:

"[...] the government must have the ability to read all the information crossing the Internet in the United States in order to protect it from abuse."

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:

"FERC notes, in its usual bureaucratic style, that "poor vegetation management" has caused most of the problems relating to past regional blackouts."

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.)

BS

[dotancohen]

I call BS on this one. I was in the US just two weeks ago. The airport was at security level 4 out of 5. I asked an officer what the threat was, and he told me that in the four years that he had been working there, the threat level had not budged from level 4. That means that there are effectively only two levels of threat: 4 and 5. This also means that the officers are authorized to perform 'checks' and other violations of the rights that I know Americans used to hold dear. This is a temporary situation, I understand, however the temporary situation has been in effect for over four years it seems! I believe that the CIA 'admitting' that the power outages are attacks are a way to drum up public support for more 'checks' and ways to survey the public. If they were real attacks then I doubt the CIA would make that public. I also doubt that the CIA would be the agency to do make that public. I don't subscribe to the many conspiracy theories that populate Reddit, but from the little that I did see in the US in the three days that I was there, things have changed since 1999 (last time I was there). People are now scared. People _want_ their government to invade their lives. That is scary. I was thinking of Winston Smith the whole time.

Re:Why not use air-gap firewalls?

[ecavalli]

Where does this idea that every computer that exists must be plugged into the net come from?

Microsoft, Linksys, Google, Yahoo ... I could go on, but the I don't want to test the theory that these text boxes have finite character limits.

Re:Why are systems like this hooked onto the inter

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are systems like this hooked onto the internet
Am I the only one that thinks thats a really stupid thing to do?

Current schema calls for putting everything on one massive grid, reading meters from the offices and generating from numerous locations then load balancing to supply the needs and not imbalance the generators. While this to many seems like a magnificient idea, particularly since it appears to open the market to competition from suppliers, however it could also be taken down in one fell swipe. With any controls/servers hooked to the intenet it would be too inviting a target, for foreign governments, internal protest groups and anyone who is just trying to show off.

Individual production with such a backbone in place for backup instead of primary supplier would be far more secure and with renewable electrical generation it would be greener too. Selling excess to the grid distributors however has the potential to bring back the family farm, reduce city costs of dealing with wastes and so on.

IANEE, IANME, nor an English major as you probably already guessed from the weak sentence structure.

Re:Just in time... not how you think

[commodoresloat]

FTFA:

Donahue said that the CIA had thoroughly weighed the pros and cons of making this information public, according to Paller.

And then decided that it should be made public but only after 5 pm on a Friday so that by the time most people notice, it's old news.

Re:Why are systems like this hooked onto the inter

[baileydau]

I thought the exact same thing. I'm no expert on power grids and how they're managed, but I think there are two possible reasons why their control systems were hooked up to the Internet:

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.

Actually here in Australia, the power generation company (at least in my state) does have it's own control network. It used to be Copper, but a while back they replaced it with fibre. They ended up with so much excess bandwidth that they wholesale it to companies. I assume they have their fibres separated from everyone else's.

Option 2 may cut into their profits a bit though :P

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.

Re:Why are systems like this hooked onto the inter

[kongit]

My dad is an engineer working for a power company. Whenever this topic comes up he normally just shrugs and says won't work or that it isn't as green as you think it would be. First of all not every home has the ability to produce power by solar, wind, or other means. Of course in some areas like AZ it would have a good chance of working but then you have to consider the second point. To produce solar panels or wind turbines one must exert energy and also cause pollution. Santa Claus does not deliver them magically. Of course once a framework of solar or wind power is created the energy cost is not longer as much of a factor. The pollution however could very well be. To make solar panels involves complex chemicals and is usually based off of petroleum products. While the pollutants from making solar panels are not necessarily released into the air, they could very well be worse for the environment then that of gas or oil fired plants. Of course I have not made any study into this claim, but I ask people who are very strongly in support of solar power about it. Most of them don't even realize that in order to make the solar panels some factory somehwere has to make pollutants. I guess since they can't see the pollutants at their house it doesn't matter to them. Additionally I would be willing to bet that the pollution control on electrical generating plants is of a much higher degree than that of the solar or wind turbine producing factory. So while I don't know the exact facts I don't just blindly say that hey solar and wind power is green. You got to get that solar panel or wind turbine from somewhere. I hope that solar and wind power can become dominant not because of the environmental side, but because the oil supply will someday run out and I don't like being dependent on foreign nations for oil. As to your schema it would be more effective to have a couple more smaller plants and more redundant wiring. Of course the problem is cost and until it makes financial sense or the government forces them to, the power companies won't be over concerned about rare power outages. And as for the topic, stupid companies that are not secure from external threats over the internet are just that stupid. There are many ways to stop this and it has nothing to do with the structure or the grid, just from lazy management or IT.

everything I said is hearsay and might be wrong from bad memory, but I do know that somebody who knows about this stuff says it isn't all its cracked up to be.

I don't think so

[commodoresloat]

This information was released at a major security conference. If they wanted to just scare everyone they would have released this info more directly to the public rather than at a meeting of specialists who could see through a line of BS. And if they were really going for the fear factor they'd leak this on a monday or tuesday morning, not at 6pm on the friday before a long weekend. It sounds to me like they want to diminish any possible panic, not amp it up. Notice they're not blaming terrorists or enemies either; the strong implication is organized crime with some kind of inside connections. I tend to be pretty skeptical of CIA but based on the little info that is here I'm guessing they're not making this up, and they probably are hoping that letting people know who are responsible for computer security at more localized levels will make it more likely for them to trace the perps.

Re:OOB management isn't a panacea

[QuantumG]

Wardialers were popular because people often used security via obscurity to protect computer systems instead of proper authentication. "No-one knows the phone number, so we're safe."

This is a real risk

[Z00L00K]

And it is often caused by the fact that many control systems today depends on operating system from the same vendor as all other machines, namely Microsoft. In one way it's useful to have the machines on the net. This because it's cheap and easy to get a DSL line to the remote unmanned locations. The problem is that even if you do a VPN connection there is still a risk that the firewalls can be penetrated. (misconfiguration etc.)

There is always a balance between cost and protection and it's easy to cut back the costs, since the risks are very hard to weigh. Many companies calculates with a certain amount of downtime caused by "unforseen" events. What's in this category also depends on the amount of money put into the security bag. They are just comparing the agreements with their customers and the cost for protection and are figuring out that "OK, we can allow to have a day or more downtime without violating our customer agreements".

It's all about money, but sometimes you may think that there are people as mean as Marwin Meathead [hermanhedning.com].

Re:OOB management isn't a panacea

[NerveGas]

I don't think it's terribly different in power. Here, if you have central air, the power company asks you every month if they can install a gadget to let them turn your AC off whenever they feel like it, in "rolling blackout" fashion. They're not installing a dedicated line, which leaves either a signal over the powerline, or radio, either of which is likely to be VERY vulnerable.

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

[Evil Pete]

I really liked the last paragraph in the article:

Citing two Government Accountability Office reports on SCADA security, Paller said that people have been adding wireless and Windows to SCADA systems without really thinking about security. "They're gotten radically unsafe," he said.

Windows + wifi + scada + power_grid = fun_and_games

Re:Why are systems like this hooked onto the inter

[Charbox]

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.

My developers gave up on that a long time ago. Now, whenever the end user asks for live assistance, or in any one of a number of error conditions, we spawn off an ssh tunnel from the customer site to our mothership server, send the error/status report, and leave the thing open for three days.

Yeah, we snag customer care techs off the street, it's true. But your security-cleared IT personnel install whatever we ship as root if we tell them too in the readme. I'm not trying to scare or insult you or act macho. It's pathetic that we could arrange to expose the networks of dozens of Fortune 500 companies. But realistically, if someone calls up and can't figure out what our software did with their tax information, it's a lot quicker to tunnel in and look at the logs than it is to walk them through the myriad of possibilities on the phone.

Why should anyone believe them?

[unbug]

"We have information", "We suspect, but cannot confirm", "We do not know who executed these attacks or why", "other information related to the attack was not mentioned and is unlikely to be forthcoming". WTF? I suspect but cannot confirm that this is complete bullshit. I do not know who invented this bullshit or why. I will not mention other information related to this bullshit and it is unlikely to be forthcoming.

HI! We are the US's Profesional Lying Team!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

We are into lying, like, you know... BIG TIME!

We also have secret wars, illegal financing, blackmail, brainwashing, manipulation of the press, assassination, extra-judicial surveillance, detention and punishment. What'd I leave out? Oh, yeah! "Harsh Interrogation". That's just "torture" between us. But I digress. The mainline business is lying - it's like the life-blood of the other operations.

Now trust us on this one: The Internet is extremely dangerous.

Really. You'll have to get on board with us over this one, as we begin to curtail the Internet. I know it's a useful tool for communication. But we'll all have to live with censorship, spying and blockage, to stop an Internet 9/11.

It is most important that you associate political speech and action on the Internet with suspicious motive - even with predilection for terror. We will develop this theme over the next few years, so stay tuned - and stay safe.

Trust us. Would we lie to you?

Re:Why are systems like this hooked onto the inter

[budgenator]

mostly they use an out-of-bands, according to Bruce Parens they frequntly use RF signals over the powerlines!

It has historically operated over a primitive form of "BPL", analog or digital control signals transmitted over long-haul power lines, generally using a low-frequency signal. In Northern California, we can hear a RTTY signal around 137.5 KHz that might be SCADA leaking from power lines into the air, and the power companies have opposed the allocation of a ham frequency in that band becuase they claim it could interfere with SCADA. Bruce [technocrat.net]

I've also gotten the impression that this is something that the CIA themselves may have done on other occasions.

Re:I don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in the energy sector, I was at said security conference and this is no BS. There definitely have been several outages due to cyber-attacks both abroad and in the US. Like CIA, I can't give you specifics because other systems similar to those attacked remain vulnerable and disclosing the identities of the victims would almost certainly lead to further attacks (security through obscurity I know, but until these systems get fixed it's all we've got). Unfortunately, more and more SCADA/EMS systems are being connected to corporate networks as the business side of the company wants more data from operations in order to manage the business better. The problem is that we all know that many corporate networks are already compromised and SCADA systems were never designed to be secure. It's very easy to compromise a SCADA system running on decades old software (think NT4 and older) if you've managed to compromise the corporate network already...