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Hacker Claims He Broke Into Wind Turbine Systems
itwbennett writes "Claiming revenge for an 'illegitimate firing,' someone has posted screenshots and other data, apparently showing that he was able to break into a 200 megawatt wind turbine system owned by NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of Florida Power & Light. In an e-mail interview, Bgr R said he's a former employee who discovered a vulnerability in the company's Cisco security management software that he then used to hack into the SCADA systems used to control the turbines. His motive was to embarrass the company, he said."
I'm sure that NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of Florida Power & Light, was mortified.
Hebrews 11:8
Jeremiah 33:3
Well that pretty fucking much limits the list of possible suspects now doesn't it?
Given that getting hacked is practically an Industry Standard Best Practice(tm) by now, I'm pretty sure that some random subsidiary of a utility company that most of its customers think of as "the power bill" will be largely immune to embarrassment, even in financial terms. If you then narrow the list of suspects down, the odds are higher than you would like of getting some slammer time in exchange for basically nothing.
Unless pen-testing them is your job, I would say that you should either stay the hell out of turbine SCADA systems, or go in with a clever plan to have them shake themselves apart. Anything in between, though, is just a risky waste of time.
yes. too much can go wrong. this has the potential to be another Windscale.
i suggest we go to nuclear as soon as feasible.
News at 11.
In an e-mail interview, Bgr R said he's a former employee who discovered a vulnerability in the company's Cisco security management software that he then used to hack into the SCADA systems
That just tripped my bullshitometer. Most Cisco systems (in my experience) are pretty robust, but an employee would have been in a good position to create an open door for himself to use later. So the "vulnerability" (if I'm right) would simply be his employer's misplaced trust in him.
Especially when "hacked in" might be "used the default password"
Um, not gonna work. Like most power companies, FP & L has no shame.
Saaaayyy... something this important, why are these jokers doing communications through the internet? It should be bloody difficult to even intercept control signals for these wind turbines, nuke power plants, etc. IOW, they should be using dedicated wires and microwave point-to-point communications with encryption, not broadcasting it all over the entire planet for everybody to be able to try to "hack" it.
Hacker Claims He Broke Wind Into Turbine Systems
Yes because a wind turbine going havoc causes the public order to collapse, instead of a nice and silent nuclear reactor meltdown.
When the shit hits the fan.
-- Chaos, panic, pandemonium... My job here is done!
I'm never surprised when I hear about industrial systems getting hacked for two reasons: (1) the venerable OPC protocol and (2) the mad insistence of IT departments that everything - including process control systems - has to come under their control.
There's nothing wrong with OPC per se, but it relies on DCOM (which isn't secure). Even if they've moved to the better OPC UA or some other architecture there's still the craziness of making industrial systems accessible over the corporate network.
What if he were a terrorist? Al-queda could sabotage the wind turbines, creating a MASSIVE wind spill! Think of the economic impact...the devastated lives...the broken families! Did we learn nothing from BP in the Gulf?
Oh the humanity!
We need Michael Bay to create a movie to fully articulate the possibilities of such a disaster. Wind everywhere...
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
He'll risk prison just to break wind in public?
MOST SCADA systems are horribly protected. idiot managers and phb's want remote access to systems that should be on protected and isolated networks. Please sack the managers that demand remote internet access to SCADA systems that do not have a legitimate reason other than to satisfy the demand of that manager.
I know of several Water filtration plants that are horribly open to attack because the supervisor of them is too damn lazy to drive in to do his work. And YES you can easily make a secure connection between the SCADA system and a unprotected network for extraction of data, A one way 100bt or 1000bt connection is trivial to do by anyone that is competent in networking, removal of the RX wires makes it impossible for any hacker on this planet to get into the system. And yes you CAN broadcast data and receive it on the server to give a live view for the managers as well as for data logging to their favorite MS Access script.
Instead we get the entire scada system on the municipality's network with full internet access and have employees checking email and surfing the web on the freaking SCADA interface PC's.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
pics or it didn.... oh.
Justification for his firing is sounding better and better all the time.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
" http://www.itworld.com/security/156817/wind-power-company-sees-no-evidence-reported-hack
Also:
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2011/Apr/264
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2011/Apr/265
~Sticky
Anyone got a link to the actual pics that the article merely talks about? Would be hilarious if he's trying to pass off vendor instruction / tech manual screen shots as his "proof".
The guy could have caused a heck of a lot more disruption if he knew he was going to be canned and collected his screenshots first... You can imagine the extremely expensive chaos if he later publishes screenshots of a system that in fact cannot be remotely broken into. Millions of dollars spent trying to figure out how he got in, when he never did. The comedy might come later when they discover its actually wide open after all. Would that be considered ironic in the real sense, or only in the angsty music sense?
Another question is what does a typical SCADA do at a windmill? Can anything really bad happen? I'm guessing the inputs will be RPM, transmission oil temp, windspeed.... maybe temperature to detect icing conditions (err does it ever freeze in FL?) ... maybe some vague vibration sensor thingy to detect damage... The outputs at a windmill SCADA are maybe AoA of the blades if they're dumb enough to control that remotely instead of internal to the control system, and probably a braking system to shut er down remotely. What I'm getting at, is theres not too much possibility of damage here, compared to a refinery SCADA or ... pretty much any other SCADA installation I have heard of (in strong contrast to the ones I've actually worked with, that are pretty harmless). I guess worst case scenario is you could Possibly theoretically thru horrible system design allow someone to remotely reprogram the automatic blade feathering speed and next time a hurricane blows thru the blades could fly off, although that'll be blamed as an act of god rather than hack. Why you'd allow someone to remotely reprogram something like that is mystifying, sounds like engineering malpractice at the design phase to me.
I'm sure there's plenty of fear mongering, like the SCADA could program the onsite R2D2 droid to use its arm to unscrew the bolts holding the blade to the hub, and BS like that, but is there actually any possibility of damage? I'm guessing no.
Finally, not to violate any NDAs, but at one of the many telecom operations I worked for, we had a very elaborate and expensive SCADA system that was almost purely read only... Thousands of channels of read only data... temperature of all kinds of communications gear, humidity to detect rain leaks, nitrogen system pressure, essentially the worlds most expensive monitored door security system, voltage of pretty much anything that generates a voltage either for power or communications monitoring, alarm connections on all gear that has alarm relay outputs... If someone broke into that SCADA hoping to "blow up the phone company" they would probably be very pissed off that the only remotely controllable output was an indicator light (to be used as a morse code order wire if all else failed, also we periodically blinked those lights so the remote site techs knew if they saw it blink once in a while, the SCADA system was up, and of course the light shared the SCADAs power system to prove it even had power). I guess it could be considered confidential secret knowledge that relay rack #7 is running about 82 degrees F at this moment, if nothing else you now know we have at least 7 racks on site... but its not exactly going to destroy the world if anyone finds out it exists or that its 82 as opposed to 81 or 83 degrees. I'm guessing a windmill is equally hands off, there's just not that many knobs and levers to be controlled in person, much less remotely.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Is this guy really touting that he hacked this stuff, because he was let go from his job? Embarrassing a company is nothing new these days. Assuming his claims are indeed true, he's now boasted about his mis-deeds and it will only served to be used against him in a court of law.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
"It's probably still up in the air as to whether this was a real threat or a hoax," Cusimano said.
Hopefully he put air quotes around that as well.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Glad to be living on the seacoast in NH.
Well since you are so paranoid, I'd like to point out that Ontario Canada generates over 200 times the nuclear generation capacity of Florida, and it's right next door to NH !
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
this guy want to blow us all!
And how is that a bad thing? I personally don't swing that way, but I can only applaud this guy's generosity.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I heard their foundations are built with a material composed partly of dihydrogen monoxide! 8-(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Not to mention when the megatsunami from the Canary Islands arrives at some point in the future, you can expect that your house will be upgraded to houseboat in one easy step.
[citation needed]
I have been to a wind farm and seen the setup. I would not be surprised if this is possible at all.
Basically you have a company that runs the windmills and you have a different company that actually builds the damn things.
So while NextEra Energy Resources may run the stupid things, likely someone like Siemens actually built the things. Generally speaking while NextEra Energy Resources may maintain things, Siemens would really be the technical experts.
Thus this is why I was told companies like Siemens can actually connect to windmills in the US and Canada from Denmark or wherever they are located. They have full control so they can try and fix problems remotely. They do this over the Internet. As soon as I heard that, I was like "What? Really?" as it was a huge red flag for security. Of course these are supposed to be secure systems, but I know the one I saw didn't look all that awfully sophisticated. If there was a "flaw" in the system, someone that works there, particularly in IT would be well placed to discover it. Likely he was able to connect much like Siemens would.
No kidding.
That stuff makes the sweat pour off me....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......