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South Korean Power Plants To Conduct Cyber-Attack Drills Following Hack
An anonymous reader writes South Korea's nuclear operator has been targeted in a cyber-attack, with hackers threatening people to 'stay away' from three of the country's nuclear reactors should they not cease operations by Christmas. The stolen data is thought to be non-critical information, and both the company and state officials have assured that the reactors are safe. However, KHNP has said that it will be conducting a series of security drills over the next two days at four power plants to ensure they can all withstand a cyber-attack. The hacks come amid accusations by the U.S. that North Korea may be responsible for the punishing hack on Sony Pictures. Concerns have mounted that Pyongyang may initiate cyber strikes against industrial and social targets in the U.S. and South Korea.
Now would be a good time to institude a national airgap policy for critical infrastructure, if not already in place.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
"May be responsible"???? What happened to the FBI and their concrete "sources can't be reveled" proof?
Am I the only one who seems to have realized BEFORE everything was hooked up to 'The Net' and 'On the Cloud' that this is a bad idea, as it makes it vulnerable to attack?
Managers always seem to want the "Next Big Thing" but never ask the important questions - is it a good idea? And what are the risks?
Some of them dismiss the risks as trivial, like "Who would EVER want to risk their life spray painting their name on an overpass? Therefore - it will not happen." And thus, do not make any plans or steps to prevent such a thing from happening. Then seem surprised when it does.
Astounding.
that a lot of companies will be re-evaluating their security.
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The fuck a nuclear reactor need to be connected to the Internet??? Air gap anyone?!?!
So we're not going to mention the ongoing US cyberattack against North Korea that's effectively knocked it entirely off the Internet?
Interesting.
That's my first reaction: it's one thing to set up a virtual environment and pen-test it; rather another to test systems which are currently making sure nuclear plants are running properly and fully failsafed.
Maybe I'm just paranoid 'cause I'm reading "Wolves eat Dogs," but I sure hope they don't test on an operational plant.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Come on guys, nobody is buying it. It can't be that after Iraq and the WMDs, or Benghazi, that people know we are flat out liars. MORE PROPAGANDA!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I wish more shit would do this. Nevermind that USB has turned out to be a huge mess for ensuring I/O access to your computer system.
Lots of times when I was 'locked out' of my computer pre-USB I could still trigger reboots, application termination, or switch to console (linux, or rarely windows if the display driver crashed in a non-BSOD manner.) Nowadays if you have a USB-only system, or are utilizing a USB keyboard you often run into issues with bios access (some systems USB keyboards act just like AT or PS/2 ones, others only have predefined intervals where they trigger properly), you often find yourself with the usb bus disabled and no way to trigger system requests, interrupts, or non-hardware reboots.
For all their talk about the 'future' a number of things have gotten changed in manners that have turned out to NOT be for the better.
Watchout!
Kim Jong now has the 1337 haxor skillz to set a Sony alarm clock to go off at any time he chooses!
We're doomed!
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
I'm not advocating that the bombs should be falling, however, if North Korea has been confirmed as being responsible for the attack on Sony and now appears to be making terroristic threats against American allies then why has there been no response from the U.S.? Sanctions or something!
A foreign nation has attacked a U.S. company on U.S. soil and has caused financial loss to that company and is threatening the lives of those associated with that company. Now, North Korea is making direct threats against the U.S. Is this not an act of War? Where is our response?
A Quartz article says the DHS accidentally released more than 800 pages "demonstrating how easy it was to hack elements in power and water systems."
The article says the DoD bought devices that would protect power plants from attack:
“DOD bought several of the iGR-933, they bought them to give them away to utilities with critical substations,” Weiss said. “Even though DOD was trying to give them away, they couldn’t give them to any of the utilities because any facility they put them in would become a ‘critical facility’ and the facility would be open to NERC-CIP audits.”
Assuming this article is accurate (I don't know how power stations work), I hope the new Congress will care enough about security to force utilities to secure themselves. I'm not holding my breath, though.
To prevent cyber attack:
1. remove or turn off all router to the internet/ISP
done
For example, nuclear-grade UPS systems typically offer a feature such as the following: "Digital logic free. 100% analog control with fully verified behavior. No need for expensive and time consuming software verification"
Similar validation is available for nuclear grade diesel generators and their control systems.
Similar design principles are often applied to the reactor instrumentation, although reactor control is usually digital and verified to the highest level. That typically means no inputs to the system, except the core sensors and core controls. The software uses only a minimal subset of language and OS features - e.g. no memory allocation, no dynamic linking or binding, etc. Calibration and model data must be built into code using a validated code generator and then statically linked into the binary, all memory must be statically allocated at compile time, etc.
The risk is whether less critical systems may be at risk - SCADA and similar systems may be in use for alternator controls, or in switchyard controls. The risk is that grid power to the plant could be interrupted, forcing the plant onto generator power. Or perhaps, other plant might be degraded - non-critical water pumps or plant controls, could mean that under degraded conditions, the plant has less tolerance to a reactor accident.
Realistically, unless you have schematics which detail the control systems in use, it is not possible to determine the severity of a particular attack. Further the interaction between different plant systems may be difficult to predict.
Even if the only realistic target for a cyber attack is the switchyard, that is still highly disruptive and degrades the safety margin of the plant by removing grid power as an energy source.
Highly doubtful that the US govt is behind NK going dark. What does it accomplish? This sounds more like Anonymous or another hacktivist group running a DDOS on NK's one ingress/egress point (lol).