Offshore Drilling Rigs Vulnerable To Hackers

Hugh Pickens writes "Foreign Policy magazine reports that a research team from the SINTEF Group, an independent Norwegian think tank, has warned oil companies worldwide that offshore oil rigs are highly vulnerable to hacking as they shift to unmanned robot platforms where vital operations — everything from data transmission to drilling to sophisticated navigation systems that maintain the platform's position over the wellhead — are controlled via wireless links to onshore facilities. 'The worst-case scenario, of course, is that a hacker will break in and take over control of the whole platform,' says Martin Gilje Jaatun, adding that it hasn't happened yet, but computer viruses have caused personnel injuries and production losses on North Sea platforms. The list of potential cyberattackers includes ecowarriors aiming to jack up an oil firms' production costs, extortionists drawn to oil firms' deep pockets, and foreign governments engaging in a strategic contest for ever-more-scarce global oil reserves, says Jeff Vail, a former counterterrorism and intelligence analyst with the US Interior Department. 'It's underappreciated how vulnerable some of these systems are,' says Vail. 'It is possible, if you really understood them, to cause catastrophic damage by causing safety systems to fail.'"

Comments

A proper shell account

[Krneki]

Now, "I got a shell account" gets a whole new meaning.

Astounding

[mysidia]

computer viruses have caused personnel injuries and production losses on North Sea platforms

They run Windows-based control software, and don't take the most basic security precautions such as banning web browsing and operators from executing unsigned files on management consoles?

Re:Astounding

[Viol8]

"I've seen a self-checkout cash register system boot up: Java on top of Windows"

Back in the early 90s I used to work for a firm that did checkout software. When I arrived it was written in C with a large amount of assembler on top of DOS and ran at a blistering pace even on a 286. Then some gimp of a manager got taken to lunch by some greasy haired sales rep and next thing we knew it was being re-written in VB & Powerbuilder (yeah , I know, laugh now but people used to think it was cool) on top of Win 3.1.

Upshot? It ran at about 1/4 the speed and crashed far more often plus the PCs needed to be 386 minimum - cue lots of upgrading by customers.

Apparently they call it "progress".

Re:Astounding

[lysergic.acid]

How is going from C + ASM on DOS to VB + Powerbuilder on Win 3.1 more maintainable? Are you seriously suggesting that all embedded systems should be running a desktop OS for maintainability reasons (or that no embedded software is maintainable)?

I remember using VB4 back in the day (Win98, I think) and even then the VB IDE had a hard time opening VB3 projects. Good luck trying to get Visual Studio 2008 to open a VB2 project. With C and ASM, at least you can code the project in a variety of IDEs--even plaint-text editors. What are you going to use to open an .frx file other than VB?

Furthermore, you can write maintainable C/ASM code for an embedded RISC/ARM processor just as you can write unmaintainable spaghetti code for an x86 Windows platform. If you're writing software for a desktop platform, you're going to have to update it every few years to keep up with changes in the mainstream desktop platform (new OS, new processors, etc.). If you're writing software for embedded systems then you'll only need to update your software when you decide that you want to change processors, chipsets, or add new features. Re-compiling your code for the next version of the ARM processor is likely to be easier than re-writing your entire application to use a different set of system libraries.

Re:Astounding

[MrNaz]

This whole thread is on the wrong track.

Safety on an oil rig should not be in software. It should be mechanical. A big fat mechanical-reflex operated titanium counterweight that closes a wellhead when pressure is lost can't be hacked in software. Yea, they can shut the rig down, but catastrophic permanent environmental damage is avoided.

The same goes for all last-line safety systems. They should be 100% mechanical, uninfluenced by these unreliable, capricious devices we call computers.

Hack The Planet

[ticklemeozmo]

I hope nobody finds the old Davinci Virus which was written about 25 years ago...

Re:WTF: OpenSource Tag More Important

[Informative]

Either the reporter doesn't get it, or it's FUD. Wikipedia lists two open source versions: OpenSCADA and FreeSCADA, but mentions that the original versions (presumably "decades-old") were on Unix or VMS and proprietary; hardly open source. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA)
The "Astounding" post above says "They run Windows-based control software". That *is* astounding, and should be considered criminally negligent.

SINTEF is no "think tank"

[orzetto]

SINTEF is not a think tank, it is a major applied-research institution. It is similar (with due proportions) to the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.

The original reports

[hhg]

The SINTEF-report can be found here:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/8v34n016j3648872/

and the base report for a successful attack is here:

http://sislab.no/redteam.pdf

SINTEF should not Cry Wolf

[Terje Mathisen]

Disclaimer: My first job after graduation was with SINTEF, next I worked 24 years for Hydro/StatoilHydro (Norway's largest offshore oil operator), where I (among many other things) specified how the production and admin networks should be separated on each platform.

First of all: Most North Sea platforms use fiber links these days, microwave is only there as a backup in case something cuts the fiber, which means that if you want to use the radio link as your attack point, you must first locate and disable the fiber(s).

Second, the production networks, which is the only part which can directly affect platform infrastructure has significantly better security than the office/admin net.

I.e. you would first have to hack into the regular StatoilHydro network, then find a way to pass through the admin/process firewall before you could even start to try to take over one or more control computers. (And afaik none of these run any form of open source SCADA sw.)

Finally, the 'integrated operations' mentioned in the article consists of special on-shore operations rooms which have strict physical security checks: The computers inside these rooms are indeed part of the production network, they have no direct links at all to the office/admin net and/or the Internet.

Terje

Re:What is the alternative?

[Mr. Freeman]

You assume that the choices are:
A) Microsoft OS (which specifically states that it is NOT FOR USE WHERE PEOPLE MAY DIE)
B) Some fucking idiot with 3 days of C programming classes making a custom operating system.

Alright, I guess I have to explain this to you.
It is possible to hire experienced, knowledgeable people to develop custom operating systems. It is also possible to have that code thoroughly reviewed, tested, etc. to make sure it won't fail in such a way that people die.

Yes, it's more expensive to create/maintain/fix. But on the other hand, people won't die this way.

Seriously, do you use carabiners that say "not for climbing" when you go climbing because they're "cheaper" and "easier to replace"? If not, then you probably should so that you may rid us of your misguided thought that devices that say "NOT FOR USE WHERE PEOPLE MAY DIE" are perfectly suited to things where people may die.