critical infrastructure Archives

Tag: critical infrastructure

Future Will Bring More Drones, More Drone Hacks

May 20, 2013 Paul Roberts

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs (aka “drones”) are evolving – and fast. Just within the last five years, drones have morphed from stealthy and secretive military gear used for hunting down terrorists in the hills of Afghanistan and Yemen, to widely available consumer technology. The “consumerization” of UAV technology has created a lot of opportunities for Cool! – like this video of a UAV flying over (and almost in to) Niagra Falls. But it has also led to some problems. In March, a UAV “quadrcopter” came within a couple hundred feet of striking an Alitalia flight trying to land at JFK Airport in New York. More concerning: the FAA is set to license tens of thousands of drones for use over the U.S., many by law enforcement or private security firms. That has prompted warnings about a huge breach of privacy for U.S. citizens. But one security researcher warns that […]

Homeland Security Warns Of Expanding Medical Device Attacks

May 7, 2013 Paul Roberts

A bulletin published by the Department of Homeland Security has warned that the increasing use of wireless networking technology to enable medical devices expands the ways that those devices could be hacked. The bulletin, published May 4 by DHS’ National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, warns that advances in medical devices, including Internet connectivity and the use of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices in patient care “expands the attack surface” of medical devices. “Smartphones and tablets are mini computers with instant access to the internet or linked directly to a hospital’s network. The device or the network could be infected with malware designed to steal medical information if not upgraded with the latest anti-virus and spy-ware software,” DHS said. Advances in medical device technology have already greatly improved medical care, especially in areas like medical health records and remote monitoring of patients with implantable medical devices. However, too little […]

Update: Hack Investigation At Dept. of Labor Turns Up Internet Explorer 8 Zero Day Hole

May 5, 2013 Paul Roberts

A hack of the U.S. Department of Labor web site that was revealed late last week is being described as a “watering hole” style attack aimed at compromising the systems of other government workers, in part using an exploit for a previously unknown (or “zero day”) security vulnerability in some versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser.(*) Multiple reports last week indicated that a security breach of the Department of Labor web site had occurred. Accounts indicated that visitors to the site using versions of Internet Explorer were being attacked using exploits for a known vulnerability. Over the weekend, however, researchers analyzing the attacks say that it used an exploit for a zero day hole in IE8, and that details of the attack tie it to a China-based hacking group known as “DeepPanda.” In a blog post on Friday, researchers at the security firm Invincea said that they believed that the […]

Update: Serial Server Flaws Expose Critical Infrastructure

April 24, 2013 Paul Roberts

A survey conducted by the firm Rapid 7 has found evidence that widespread vulnerabilities and insecure configuration of ubiquitous networking components known as serial port (or “terminal”) servers, may expose a wide range of companies and critical assets – including point of sale terminals, ATMs and industrial control systems – to remote cyber attacks.(*) The vulnerable devices connected hardware like retail point-of-sale systems at a national chain of dry cleaners, providing direct access to employee terminals from which customer payment information could be accessed. Other exposed systems were used to monitor the location of cargo containers, train cargo as well as HVAC and industrial control systems, Rapid7 said. In the Rapid7 survey, over 114,000 unique IPs were identified in a scan using the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), the vast majority manufactured by one company: Digi International. If left unaddressed, the vulnerable devices give remote attackers direct, administrative access to hardware devices […]

Juiced: DDoS Attacks 700 Percent Stronger, Iran Joins Top Source Countries

April 17, 2013 Paul Roberts

Denial of Service attacks are experiencing a surge in power and duration in the first months of 2013, with Iran joining China and The United States as a top source of the crippling online attacks. The power of distributed denial of service (or DDos) attacks – measured in packets per second – jumped 718 percent in the first three months of 2013, compared to the final three months of 2012, the security firm Prolexic reported on Wednesday. The average bandwidth used in DD0S attacks reached 32.4 million packets per second, overwhelming Internet service providers (ISPs), carriers and content delivery networks designed to mitigate the effects of sudden Internet traffic surges. The data comes from Prolexic’s DD0S Report for the first quarter of 2013. That firm, based in Hollywood, Florida, has become a go-to firm for companies that find their web sites on the receiving end of DDoS attacks. The average attack bandwidth totaled […]