Tag Archives: industrial control systems

Microsoft finds vulnerabilities it says could be used to shut down power plants

Rockwell Automation reader comments 19 with On Friday, Microsoft disclosed 15 high-severity vulnerabilities in a widely used collection of tools used to program operational devices inside industrial facilities such as plants for power generation, factory automation, energy automation, and process automation. The company warned that while exploiting the code-execution and denial-of-service vulnerabilities was difficult, it… Read More »

Hackers are targeting industrial systems with malware

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) From the what-could-possibly-go-wrong files comes this: An industrial control engineer recently made a workstation part of a botnet after inadvertently installing malware advertising itself as a means for recovering lost passwords. Lost passwords happen in many organizations. A programmable logic controller—used to automate processes inside factories, electric plants, and other industrial… Read More »

Florida water plant compromise came hours after worker visited malicious site

reader comments 31 with 26 posters participating, including story author Share this story An employee for the city of Oldsmar, Florida, visited a malicious website targeting water utilities just hours before someone broke into the computer system for the city’s water treatment plant and tried to poison drinking water, security firm Dragos said Tuesday. Ultimately,… Read More »

How a VPN vulnerability allowed ransomware to disrupt two manufacturing plants

Getty Images reader comments 15 with 13 posters participating Share this story Ransomware operators shut down two production facilities belonging to a European manufacturer after deploying a relatively new strain that encrypted servers that control manufacturer’s industrial processes, a researcher from Kaspersky Lab said on Wednesday. The ransomware known as Cring came to public attention… Read More »

Feds say man broke into public water system and shut down safety processes

reader comments 44 with 37 posters participating Share this story Federal prosecutors have indicted a Kansas man for allegedly logging into a computer system at a public water system and tampering with the process for cleaning and disinfecting customers’ drinking water. An indictment filed in US District Court for the District of Kansas said Wyatt… Read More »

Hard-coded key vulnerability in Logix PLCs has severity score of 10 out of 10

Rockwell Automation reader comments 91 with 69 posters participating, including story author Share this story Hardware that is widely used to control equipment in factories and other industrial settings can be remotely commandeered by exploiting a newly disclosed vulnerability that has a severity score of 10 out of 10. The vulnerability is found in programmable… Read More »

Computer intruder tried to poison Florida city’s drinking water with lye

reader comments 130 with 104 posters participating Share this story Someone broke into the computer system of a water treatment plant in Florida and tried to poison drinking water for a Florida municipality’s roughly 15,000 residents, officials said on Monday. The intrusion occurred on Friday evening, when an unknown person remotely accessed the computer interface… Read More »