Expert: Hackers Penetrating Control Systems

The networks powering industrial control systems have been breached more than 125 times in the past decade, with one resulting in U.S. deaths, a control systems expert said Thursday.

Joseph Weiss, managing partner of control systems security consultancy Applied Control Solutions, didn't detail the breach that caused deaths during his testimony before a U.S. Senate committee, but he did say he's been able to find evidence of more than 125 control systems breaches involving systems in nuclear power plants, hydroelectric plants, water utilities, the oil industry and agribusiness.

"The impacts have ranged from trivial to significant environmental damage to significant equipment damage to deaths," he told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. "We've already had a cyber incident in the United States that has killed people." .. More >>

Top 5 Worst IT Security Mishaps of 2007

Even though 2007 is not over, there are more than sufficient contenders for the top 5 position of the worst IT Security Mishaps of 2007. Though most of the mishaps relate to substantial data leakage, the examples are enough to raise alarm and concern about security breaches in the most trivial of cicumstances. >> More ..

Make No Assumptions. Security Begins With the Basics. YOU

There have been previous news about vendors releasing software with viruses, security vendor sites being compromised and similar incidents.

The mishaps continue ...

In a recent news article in Network World Asia titled "Seagate ships virus-laden hard drives", it was reported that:


"If you bought one of Seagate's Maxtor Basics consumer hard drives recently, check it for viruses. Especially if you're a gamer.

Seagate is warning that a "small number" of its Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 hard drives recently shipped with the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah virus, malicious software that "searches for passwords for online games and sends them to a server located in China," according to a note posted on the Seagate Web site. Only drives purchased since August 2007 are affected, Seagate said." >> More ..

This time it is gaming software players who are the targets. Could it be anything else next time like bank accounts or access to corporate sites .... the possibility is so broad.

In yet another article in Network World Asia titled "Indian news site dispensing malware", it was mentioned that:

"The Web site of IndiaTimes, the online news site of the Times Group, one of India's large news and entertainment groups, exposed visitors to malware, according to an advisory Friday by ScanSafe Inc.

ScanSafe first detected and blocked malware on the site on October 25. ScanSafe is still investigating the reach of this attack, but given the popularity of the site and the amount of malware involved, the company is urging caution, it said in its advisory Friday. Only certain pages of the Indiatimes.com are infected, the advisory added." >> More ..

The above news basically pass the message that all users should not make any assumptions about any hardware or software they acquire or install and any website that they access as the malware can be embedded in just about anywhere and in the most unlikely of all places.

Hence defence against the consequences of such incidents requires users to be sufficiently aware, educated and acculturated about good computing practices including:

1. Having good anti-malware protection that is installed and running
2. Access to credible sites only and avoid strange or unusual sites
3. Ensure that any devices plugged in especially the usb devices are scanned for viruses before use.
4. Reminding peers about good computing practices.

A good defence for both personal and organisational or corporate use begins with YOU.
It may be that through your simple negligence, the whole corporate network that you are using and critical systems can be affected.

Security Companies also Vulnerable to Attacks

Nobody is perfect and no company is perfect. But all try their best to protect themselves from attacks. The lesson learnt as always, is that security is an ongoing process and not a destination. And the process has to be alert to both internal measures that has to be diligently kept updated as well as to be aware of new threats and attack vectors.

The following link provides a list of security companies and organisations including CERTS whose web presence have been compromised in one way or another. There are other interesting information as well. Read on ..

Serious Security Breach in KLIA

The New Straits Times today reported in a news article titled "Red faces over 'phantom' stowaway" that KLIA had a security breach on Thursday 11 Oct 2007 when a man managed to stow away inside the front nose wheel chamber aboard a Singapore Airlines flight from KL to Singapore. The editorial discussed the matter in a bit more detail.

What was even more interesting is that the stowaway did not turn up on any CCTV recordings in KLIA.

So what has this got to do with CIIP? Well the transportation sector is one of the Critical National Information Infrastructure. Physical security is about the most visible of all security measures that anybody can enforce and where there would usually be traceability. If an entity is not able to handle physical security well and is unable to trace back how it happened from their own records, its left to the imagination as to what can happen if cyber breaches of the KLIA systems does occur, since comparatively, cyber intrusions and breaches are harder to detect.

We are not drawing any conclusions but the incident does raise some fundamental questions about the overall security and surveillance measures in such an important infrastructure entity, be it physical security or cyber security.