Let’s be clear: the natural gas explosions that rocked the Merrimack Valley north of Boston in September weren’t the result of a cyber attack. Unfortunately: well known vulnerabilities affecting the security of remote sensors and industrial control system software mean they easily could have been.
In this episode of the Security Ledger Podcast (#126): Die Hard has finally been embraced as the bloody, violent, feel-good Christmas movie its always been. But the film, which turns 30 this year, is about more than the power of ordinary guys to stand up to evil. Did you know it’s also a (very) early warning about the dire insecurity of building automation systems? We speak with Ang Cui of the firm Red Balloon Security about the dire risk of cyber attacks on building automation software and company’s work to secure this often-overlooked critical infrastructure.
The data-wiping Shamoon malware resurfaced this week at Italian oil and gas contractor Saipem, where it destroyed files on about 10 percent of company PCs, according to a published report. The attacks may be linked to Saipem’s work with Saudi Aramco, a target of earlier Shamoon attacks.
In this week’s podcast (episode #111), sponsored by CyberSN: what happens when the Internet gets physical? Noted author and IBM security guru Bruce Schneier joins us to talk about his new book on Internet of Things risk: Click Here to Kill Everybody. Also: everyone knows that cyber security talent is hard to come by, and even harder to keep. But why does precious cyber talent walk? In our second segment, we’re joined by Deidre Diamond of cyber security placement firm CyberSN, who has all the answers.
In this week’s episode (#110): the second major flaw in Apache Struts 2 in as many years and has put the information security community on alert. But is this vulnerability as serious as the last, which resulted in the hack of the firm Equifax? We talk with an expert from the firm Synopsys. And: we’ve heard a lot about the risk of cyber attacks on the critical infrastructure used to generate and distribute electricity. But what would happen if someone figured out to how to hack electricity demand? The Internet of Things just might make that possible. We talk to a Princeton University researcher behind a paper that discusses how even small changes in demand can have big consequences for the grid.
