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Hackers Broke Into Brazil Power Grid Operator's Website Last Thursday
An anonymous reader writes "A week ago, 60 Minutes had a story (we picked it up too) claiming that hackers had caused power outages in Brazil. While this assertion is now believed to be in error, hackers were inspired by the story actually to do what was claimed. Last Thursday, they broke into ONS, the operator of the grid (Google translation; Portuguese original). DarkReading has specific details on the SQL injection vulnerabilities the hackers probably used."
Keeping a few connected computers off the larger WAN is easy enough. But as those computer grow in number it can become more difficult to prevent someone, somewhere from opening up ssh, ftp, rdp, or some other connection-type. Then the whole LAN becomes susceptible to the evils of WAN baddies.
And don't even get me started on the lack of physical security on 'secure' systems. If you can touch it, it's insecure.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
And, two days after the blackout, the systems analyst Maycon Vitali, 23, revealed in the blog "Hack'n'roll" to a login page of the ONS revealed error in the validation data. The flaw could allow a hacker to send command to the database and find sensitive data from ONS.
The failure was published in the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo on Monday (16).
This is exactly why full disclosure is not good.
How so? If two days after the vulnerabilty was exploited causing millions of dollars of damage they *still* don't fix it, then the public has the right to know how much the security of the systems sucks. It may be the only way to prevent this from happening again.
This is ridiculous. You can easily hack into their corporate website, but there is no way hackers got into the Brazilian power grid management system, because there is no such automated system in the first place! The central agency controlling the grid Operador Nacional do Sistema (ONS) operates the center by calling their buddies on generating station over private phone lines. Unless you are a very good voice impersonator and know all the necessary protocols, you will not get very far. That's when lack of technology is a plus.