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Hackers Manipulated Railway Computers, TSA Memo Says
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Nextgov:
"Hackers, possibly from abroad, executed an attack on a Northwest rail company's computers that disrupted railway signals for two days in December, according to a government memo recapping outreach with the transportation sector during the emergency. ... While government and critical industry sectors have made strides in sharing threat intelligence, less attention has been paid to translating those analyses into usable information for the people in the trenches, who are running the subways, highways and other transit systems, some former federal officials say. The recent TSA outreach was unique in that officials told operators how the breach interrupted the railway's normal activities, said Steve Carver, a retired Federal Aviation Administration information security manager, now an aviation industry consultant, who reviewed the memo."
Is a computer that controls anything like this connected to the exterior instead of it's own private network?
Why?!
Hackers have been involved in railroads since the very beginning!
Now they'll have the excuse they need to do to the rails what they've done to the airlines.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
To me this sounds like some contractor introduced a bug to the system and is attributing the issues it caused to "hackers". If the system is really open to attacks of this nature, then it is fundamentally flawed.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
...when someone might hijack a train and crash it into a skyscraper.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
or else the outsourced IT department overseas has senior staff with, ahhh, alternate loyalties... .
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
So in your mind they have two choices:
1. Use a network that's publicly available and has known hackers.
2. Run private fiber
In my mind I have more options, for example:
3. Lease private exclusive connections
4. Lease private connections on trusted networks
5. Lease private connections on multiplexed fibers.
If they opened their controls to a public network with known hackers, then that's criminal negligence. What if a train had been derailed, what if people had lost lives? The rail network has a public duty to a BASIC LEVEL OF COMPETENCE.
Just as the very brightest criminals are the ones that are never caught, I tend to assume that there are many people poking around in just about any system of consequence. Anonymous, Wikileaks, and similar operations are just the tip of the iceberg.
I expect that we're heading for something that resembles John Brunner's Shockwave Rider, where one day a clever hacker will make all governmental data banks miraculously be wide open. The kind of thing that will make Wikileaks seem like a trifle.
As for hacking a transportation system? I kind of assume that various governments are already doing to each other.
Three Squirrels
I'm sure that it is coincidence that this sort of story gets publicity now. Nothing to do with countering the bad press the TSA has gotten today. And I'm sure there is no way this sort of thing could be prevented in the future without an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful TSA keeping watch on everyone who decides not to stay in one place all the time. Nothing to see here. Move along. Except for you, and you over there. We'll need you to step over here for a moment...
My hovercraft is full of EELS.
Of important or critical items made accessible through the Inet, what idiot bean counter thought that was a good idea?
This never would have been possible prior to putting control infrastructure on the Inet and then thinking the incompetent law makers and management would be able to secure it, in addition it's one more incident showing how ineffective the TSA really is, machine gun toting thugs roughing up citizens at the social security office or bus station while train systems get hacked.
The TSA is useless.
The law makers are stupid old men.
The corporations run everything.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Because private networks with entry points all over town can not be hacked, right.
Did you notice that quite a few of your sentences .
To hack a network with a physical separation, you have to physically hack the link.
Are you saying that unless you can make something 100% secure, we shouldn't make it 99.99% secure, and should keep it at, well about 70% secure??
You understand that on a multiplexed fiber, there's nothing you can do with the little light pulses to affect the other little light pulses, where as on a TCPIP packet network with login, it's as easy for a hacker to send login commands as for the real user.
In systems like this, misdirection like yours has no place, they need to be secure and the railway has a liability. It is criminally negligent to open its network in this way.
I'm with you on the nomenclature issue buddy, but let's face it: we've lost. Best to drain it of its usual affect so you can get on with your life in peace.
...the well-publicized "attack" on an Illinois water system by Russian Hackers that, unsurprisingly, never actually happened.
I usually try to. Right now, I honestly can't think anything but
FUCK the TSA, everything they do, and everything they stand for.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Mod this up, please as it appears to be first example of a /.er who has first hand knowledge.
Hmm.. they don't really say which railroad, but..
Given that they imply "passenger service" was affected and use terms like "rush-hour", there's really only two railroads that could have been affected.
My money's on the smaller of the two: P&W. Anybody else care to lay a wager?
Railroad signalling used to be all special purpose hardware. Not any more. Here's the "VitalNetâ Wayside Message Server". Runs Red Hat Linux. Talks "Interoperable Train Control Messaging" protocol.
It gets worse. Here's a General DataComm unit for railroad signal control. "SC-ADT ports configured for Telnet/ SSH sessions, for bypass transport (port forwarding), and to convert async PPP data to IP for transport over a cellular data network. SC-ADT managed via Telnet, SSH, SNMP, FTP, TFTP and HTTP from the Dispatch Facility. "
TFTP? FTP? Telnet? What's wrong with this picture?
There's even a hobbyist program for listening in on signal control traffic, some of which is passed around on unencrypted radio links.
...we're all still alive.
TSA contractors organize fear campaign to help boost sales.
Make the ethernet cables run through an X-Ray machine, or pat down the IP packets. It'll be as efficient as in airports to prevent future breaches.
When I worked on these, we had dedicated links (X25 serial in those days).
There simply is NO EXCUSE for routing stuff like this over the public internet, VPN or not. Even a DDOS on those communications is unacceptable. If the railway techs sent that data across a public network, their employment should immediately be terminated and the railway company liable.
"Investigators discovered two Internet access locations, or IP addresses, for the intruders on Dec. 1 and a third on Dec. 2, the document noted, but it does not say in which country they were located".
Who in their right minds connect a railway signals control system directly to the Internet?
The article tells us that this event happened to a railroad that (1) is in the Northwest, (2) runs scheduled trains during the workweek (Dec 1 was a Thursday) and (3) has frequent enough service that a 15 minute delay would be noticed.
It appears to me that the railroad described is either Washington State's Sounder Train (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sounder_commuter_rail) or Oregon's Westside Express Service (WES) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westside_Express_Service).
I should start a service selling "industrial control system security retrofits." Between the Internet and the PLC, I'll set up a simple Linux box, with cryptknock and brute-force protection that only allows SSH logins with passphrased keyfiles. Then I'll give the operators a nice script (in .bat form and shellscripts) that puts them to the login prompt in one click and sets up a tunnel between their localhost and the PLC or whatever. Then they connect to the control client to localhost and work as usual. Because the places that do this shit usually have NO IT STAFF, I'll put together a simple interface for managing the keyfiles (some GUI on the box itself would be safest - really stripped down of course, ncurses-based ideally).
For each installation I will charge $3k, maybe with a support option if they want me to manage their keyfiles remotely, very affordable to them but I am actually taxing them out the ass for stupidity >:)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...so we'll need to cup your junk at railway stations now. -TSA
"The remotely taking of pelham 123"
Not only IS it very cheap to lay down cables along rail tracks, it so CHEAP that in Holland one of the current telco's started out just like this as a daughter of the dutch railway company (NS + BT created Telfort). How do you think signals are connected? Once you laid one cable, adding more is incredible cheap especially if you can lay it down over very long distances and only need to deal with 1 owner of the land, yourself.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You know what else can get you into town with chemical, biological, or worse weapons? A truck.
Actually, the TSA is racially diverse.
wake up and hold your nose
if you pull facts and reality out of your ass ......
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