Dark Reading is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them.Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Database Security
Authentication
Mobile
Privacy
Compliance
Identity & Access Management
Security Monitoring
Advanced Threats
Insider Threats
Vulnerability Management
Comments
First Malware Designed Solely for Electric Grids Caused 2016 Ukraine Outage
Newest First  |  Oldest First  |  Threaded View
RetiredUser
50%
50%
RetiredUser,
 User Rank: Ninja
6/13/2017 | 3:37:47 PM
Infrastructure Exploits Underrated?
Power plant and grid exploits are getting more notice lately and this is an important step in opening the eyes of both consumers and professionals to the underrated category of infrastructure vulnerabilities.  Whether we are talking about massively automated manufacturing (cars, electronics, etc), transportation (trains, planes, etc) or power (nuclear, electric, etc), infrastructure both networked and siloed is vulnerable to huge-impact hacks that can affect entire states, nations and industries.

The average person is definitely aware (even if on a subconscious level) the impact on infrastructure something as singular as a traffic accident can have, or a train collision.  The amount of interdependent systems and parts that are affected freeze up more than just traffic around an accident.  We are all resources to some extent for other systems, and cargo trucks held up by traffic are causing other systems again delays, and so on.

Now, imagine your airport shutting down entirely due to an electronic intrusion of the air traffic control systems.  Or your state power grids completely shut off.  Imagine nuclear plants pushed to meltdown, or missile silos engaged outside normal controls.  For all the information security industry puts into protecting banks (yes, those too can be brought to a complete shutdown), we need to be sure equal if not superior effort and resources are being assigned to infrastructure.

Understanding the level of intertwined systems that keep society moving, we would see a devastating cascade effect of descent into chaos should any number of U.S. infrastructure towers should crumble.  Incidents like those in the Ukraine are a huge red flag to us in the U.S. to not slumber on this.  We must find more funding, more resources and move quickly to ensure the protection of our infrastructure, both high- and low-tech.

 

 


Sodinokibi Ransomware: Where Attackers' Money Goes
Kelly Sheridan, Staff Editor, Dark Reading,  10/15/2019
Data Privacy Protections for the Most Vulnerable -- Children
Dimitri Sirota, Founder & CEO of BigID,  10/17/2019
State of SMB Insecurity by the Numbers
Ericka Chickowski, Contributing Writer,  10/17/2019
Register for Dark Reading Newsletters
White Papers
Video
Cartoon
Current Issue
7 Threats & Disruptive Forces Changing the Face of Cybersecurity
This Dark Reading Tech Digest gives an in-depth look at the biggest emerging threats and disruptive forces that are changing the face of cybersecurity today.
Flash Poll
2019 Online Malware and Threats
2019 Online Malware and Threats
As cyberattacks become more frequent and more sophisticated, enterprise security teams are under unprecedented pressure to respond. Is your organization ready?
Twitter Feed
Dark Reading - Bug Report
Bug Report
Enterprise Vulnerabilities
From DHS/US-CERT's National Vulnerability Database
CVE-2019-17424
PUBLISHED: 2019-10-22
A stack-based buffer overflow in the processPrivilage() function in IOS/process-general.c in nipper-ng 0.11.10 allows remote attackers (serving firewall configuration files) to achieve Remote Code Execution or Denial Of Service via a crafted file.
CVE-2019-16404
PUBLISHED: 2019-10-21
Authenticated SQL Injection in interface/forms/eye_mag/js/eye_base.php in OpenEMR through 5.0.2 allows a user to extract arbitrary data from the openemr database via a non-parameterized INSERT INTO statement, as demonstrated by the providerID parameter.
CVE-2019-17400
PUBLISHED: 2019-10-21
The unoconv package before 0.9 mishandles untrusted pathnames, leading to SSRF and local file inclusion.
CVE-2019-17498
PUBLISHED: 2019-10-21
In libssh2 v1.9.0 and earlier versions, the SSH_MSG_DISCONNECT logic in packet.c has an integer overflow in a bounds check, enabling an attacker to specify an arbitrary (out-of-bounds) offset for a subsequent memory read. A crafted SSH server may be able to disclose sensitive information or cause a ...
CVE-2019-16969
PUBLISHED: 2019-10-21
In FusionPBX up to 4.5.7, the file app\fifo_list\fifo_interactive.php uses an unsanitized "c" variable coming from the URL, which is reflected in HTML, leading to XSS.