Ukraine Power Station Outage -- Enabled By Malware, But Not Caused By Malware (sans.org) 35
itwbennett writes: A new study of a recent cyberattack against Ukrainian power companies suggests malware didn't directly cause the outages that affected at least 80,000 customers. While malware was used to gain access to networks, the attackers then opened circuit breakers that cut power, according to information published Saturday by the SANS Industrial Control Systems (ICS) team. The attackers used direct intervention to try to mask their actions to the power systems operators and also conducted denial-of-service attacks on the utilities' phone systems to block complaints from affected customers, SANS said.
I think that's the stupidest summary ever. (Score:1)
Ukraine is weak (Score:1, Funny)
Ukraine is weak
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When Ukraine traded it's nuclear weapons for a promise that Russia respect it's territory, they made a bad deal.
They basically had no choice unless they wanted to be completely isolated by the rest of the world. The east and west were both united against them on that point.
Maybe they could have gotten a better deal if Donald Trump were negotiating for them, after all, he's the world's best negotiator, but there is no way they were keeping their nuclear weapons.
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Ukraine is weak
It is feeble! I think it is time to put the hurt on Ukraine...
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It wasn't the summary's fault. It's an accurate summary of a really stupid article. But it's in CSO Online magazine, so consider the audience is not the sharpest technical group. To them, it's all technobabble.
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God really! And did you see their prices? Damn! Compilation is good business...
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To me, that's a distinction without a difference.
There's a very clear distinction to me. It implies that this was not some complicated malware attack like Stuxnet which was specifically crafted to act as the payload. Rather it was just some malware designed to let someone in to manually do something malicious.
The complexity of the malware alone can differentiate who is implicated in the attack and it shows that this attack is very different from some other attacks on industrial systems.
Sheesh (Score:3)
Yes your honor, I stabbed the victim a hundred times. But it wasn't me - it was the knife that did the cutting.
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm still amazed that a system like this was accessible remotely. I know people that work for Hydro Quebec and they tell me the controls are 100% offline.
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No, not really .. malware was one of many pieces which enabled this to happen, but the malware did not directly do the attack. The malware was used to get a foothold, and to cover their tracks. But the actual attacks were more targeted and used other things.
This is more like someone exploiting an issue with your security system to gain access to your home so they could target your wall safe.
The malware itself wasn't the core of the attack, but it was an enabling and contributing aspect of the actual attac
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The Knife didn't kill him. It was the blood loss.
Re:Probably russian hackers (Score:4, Interesting)
And it would be the same with this. Assuming the Russians were behind it, they'd likely be using this method in part because it obscures their connection to the point that, despite everyone thinking they did it, no one can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Which, if you think about it, is sort of the best of both worlds. You get the intimidation factor that comes with people not wanting to mess with you, but also without the consequences of having gotten caught doing it.
Attack was Timed... So what? (Score:2)
About all this says over what we previously knew is that apparently the attackers picked the time of the outage and then had multiple attack points to prevent the operator from being able to effectively disrupt what the attackers where doing. This is different from some virus infection that just so happed to disrupt the operation of the equipment.
But this all matters to me why? Ukraine isn't known for it's security, physical or network. Ukraine isn't known for using the best of technology in their power
0h 0h (Score:1)
The attackers used direct intervention to try to mask their actions to the power systems operators and also conducted denial-of-service attacks on the utilities' phone systems to block complaints from affected customers
Ok, this has gone far enough. Time to get James Bond involved.
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The US isn't different (Score:2)
It's *full* of moronic CEOs who want Everything Internet Enabled!!!.. and some not only do not have air gaps between the grid controls and the 'Net, but don't even know what the words "air gap" means.
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