supply chain Archives

supply chain

Malware Campaign Against Industrial Systems Almost 3 Years Old

October 30, 2014 Paul Roberts

The U.S. Government’s Industrial Control System CERT (ICS-CERT) said on Thursday that a campaign targeting industrial control system (ICS) software began in January, 2012 and targeted industrial systems that were directly connected to the public Internet. ICS-CERT said in an alert published on Wednesday that “HMI” (or Human-Machine Interfaces) products from vendors including GE, Advantech/Broadwin and Siemens may have been infected with variants of the BlackEnergy malware since January, 2012. Infected firms were running versions of the GE’s Cimplicity, Advantech/Broadwin’s WebAccess or Siemens’ WinCC with what ICS-CERT called a “direct Internet connection.” In some cases, as with the GE Cimplicity attacks, hackers exploited a known vulnerability in the Cimplicity software to gain access. In others (as with WebAccess and WinCC) the method by which the software was compromised isn’t known, ICS-CERT said. CERT said it hasn’t documented any cases of control processes being modified by the malware. However, BlackEnergy is typically used […]

The IoT Comes To Chicago: IoT World Forum

October 14, 2014 Paul Roberts

The Internet of Things is increasingly an industry unto itself, with the conferences to prove it. And “no,” I’m not just talking about The Security of Things Forum – Security Ledger’s own IoT and security show. (Videos from our first annual show are now available, by the way. Register to view them here.) No: there are forums and symposiums focused on all different aspects of IoT: smart cities, design, wearables, and so on. There’s O’Reilly’s Solid, GigaOm Structure and any number of smaller, regional events. I’m at one of the more prominent IoT shows this week: The Internet of Things World Forum (IoTWF), which is sponsored by Cisco Systems. I’m moderating a really interesting panel that addresses a critical issue: the ways in with information technology (IT), operations technology (OT) and consumer technology (CT) converge in the IoT. These are three areas that, until recently, were separate. But a variety of developments […]

Supply Chain Risk: Raspberry Pi Device Used for War Shipping

October 7, 2014 Paul Roberts

An interesting post on supply chain security over at Security Affairs. The post looks at a new approach to supply chain surveillance (and, presumably, attacks): ‘war shipping.’ War shipping is, of course, a play on the ‘war driving’ scene from the early days of consumer wifi, in which cars outfitted with antennae would canvas whole cities, documenting open wi-fi hotspots that could be used to grab some free Internet. In this case, Security Affairs notes a shippable board-sized package designed by security expert Larry Pesce of Paul’s Security Weekly (fka Pauldotcom). The device can be contained in a standard UPS shipping box and delivered to a target network to passively surveil or even attack it. The kit is built on a Raspberry Pi b_ with an AWUS051NH wireless card, a cheap battery charger, kismet and custom software. Pesce demonstrated the device at Derbycon, a Louisville, Kentucky based event last month. The device includes both […]

DARPA Tech Identifies Counterfeit Microelectronics

October 2, 2014 Paul Roberts

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA) announced on Wednesday that advanced software and equipment it developed to spot counterfeit microelectronics in U.S. weapons and cyber security systems has been handed over to military contractors to continue development. DARPA said the product of its Integrity and Reliability of Integrated Circuits (IRIS) program: the Advanced Scanning Optical Microscope (ASOM) technology was transferred to the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) in Crane, Indiana, where it will be used to inspect microelectronics for signs of tampering or compromise. The technology was developed with the help of SRI International, an IRIS contractor. Read more Security Ledger coverage of supply chain risks. “The ASOM technology housed at NSWC Crane will help engineers provide forensic analysis of microelectronics, including integrated circuits (IC) confiscated by law enforcement officials,” DARPA said in a statement. The DoD is a major buyer of integrated circuit chips, which are mainly manufactured outside the U.S. […]

Whack-A-Bash: New Vulnerabilities add to Patch Confusion

September 29, 2014 Paul Roberts

The good news about the rapid, industry response to the revelations about exploitable security holes in GNU Bash (Bourne Again Shell) (aka “Shellshock”) is that Linux users had a fix in hand almost as soon as they became aware of the problem those patches addressed. The bad news about the quick fixes for the two issues, CVE-2014-6271 and CVE-2014-7169, from the likes of Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian and others is that – in being early- they fail to fix the problems we don’t yet know about. And that’s what we’re seeing in the wake of last week’s storm of patches: a steady drip-drip of disclosures that suggest that Bash may contain other problems worthy of new fixes. Within hours of the disclosure of the first holes, there were problems discovered by Red Hat Product Security researcher Todd Sabin, who found additional “off by one” errors in Bash that were assigned CVE-2014-7186 and CVE-2014-7187 and […]