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Evaluating Or Testing Utility SCADA Security?

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-hear-stuxnet-has-a-nice-admin-suite dept.

EncryptedBit writes "I am a local elected official involved in bringing new water and waste water treatment plants online in a small town. The new plants will incorporate SCADA, which can be used to change operational aspects at the plants, up to forcing a shutdown or changing operational parameters. Can any Slashdotters recommend ways to make sure it is secure? Any testing recommendations? The operational engineers are oblivious to security and SCADA is a new factor, so this concerns me. Any pointers would be appreciated."

3 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Don't put it on the Internet! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously keep it on it's own separate network.

    1. Re:Don't put it on the Internet! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As a security expert who has audited SCADA systems, I must amend the above remark. If you ask them, "I'm here for security, is it connected to the Internet?", they will say "no". If you instead ask them, because you are concerned, "in an emergency, how an administrator can access it remotely", then will tell you the series of systems that will allow you to connect in- firewalls, vpns, and usually a last hop Citrix remote desktop session to the SCADA software itself, which is often Siemens, and is run in a VM. When you tell them to take it off the Internet, they will put your request in change control, and find a way to get rid of you, or if you're a politician, to buy you out. Usually the people running these things have no ability to think adversarially, so they consider something that is several levels removed from the Internet to not be Internet connected, even though it is. They may even tell you that it has its own leased network, run over Frame Relay leased from a telco, which is quite common. This is also internet connected, as the ISP can get pwned, and the frame relay stuff has a management network that is on the ISP's LAN. I've done security for a Fortune 50 ISP as well.

      The short answer is, every SCADA system in the Americas is Internet connected, and no one has the balls to tell them to stop. They will only hire people to audit them who will put on kid gloves and play by their rules, and they refuse to take advice from their vendors, who they pay to be compliant. A security consultant lecturing a SCADA client on security measures is like a temp secretary lecturing a CEO on spelling. It's an event that always ends in a raised eyebrow and a prompt firing.

      Every nuclear reactor in the united states is internet connected. I've seen them. I'm certain. Being a whitehat pen tester these days is like being a turned out whore- you know you're not helping anyone but it's too late to go back.

      Posted anonymously for obvious reasons.

    2. Re:Don't put it on the Internet! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I almost forgot. Don't ask them, "is your network secure", because they will say yes, even though there's no such thing as a secure network. The appropriate question is, "how defensible is your network" and "what is your dwell time", i.e., what do you have in place to stop intrusions and how long do hackers usually last on your network. But the best question to start with is "what's your incident response budget", which they will brag about, i.e. how much money they spend on getting hackers removed when they're owned. Start there, get them to tell stories about the last time they got hacked. Then you don't have to listen when they start telling you about how they're "secure".