Pipe lines and meat packing plants are probably easier targets. People safeguarding actual cash will keep higher security than in an industrial environment....
That windows 98 computer that keeps your plant running is doing just fine as long as no one ever turns it off, is going to cost (easily) $10,000 to $20,000 depending on the software packages they would need to buy and programming time + wiring and installation.
(Was a control engineer for 10 years)
AND you don't want to get fired so you will either buy Seimens or Allen Bradley software wich comes at a price. A big price.
Sure you can run the whole thing with a $500 PC... It's everything that goes with it.
So, if that win 98 PC runs 1 more year it saves $20000 off of your budget. Security is for the IT dept to worry about.
(The IT dept is 1 colledge grad that spends all of his time wiping viruses off of pornsites you visit and resetting passwords that people are too stupid to remember, and getting that old flash animation on the website to work with modern browsers because you're too cheap to buy any actual tools for them to use.)
Yeah, they are a much easier target.
VP of Tech in the energy industry here, this is the right answer. Hackers try to hit EVERY company. It's automated. Its just a matter of time until they find that open port in your firewall. Banks and healthcare lock that stuff down TIGHT. My industry overall is dangerously behind on this.
100% agree. Controls engineer designer here.
Keeping in mind that the US and Israel went after Iran's nuclear centrifuges by causing the Allen Bradley PLCs to malfunction and rapidly spin up and spin down, which broke the mechanism. This was done with a very sophisticated virus called Stuxnet. We've known that state actors had this capability for a very long time. But we also know that the source code for Stuxnet is now widely available and other actors have it. Hacking in and locking down an outdated system in a meat-packing plant or a pipeline would be child's play.
Not only that, they distributed the virus by placing it on flashdrives and seedung tge areas where the engineers hung out. Knowing that engineers sre curious and a little pervy, the were almost guaranteed that an engineer was going to pop it into his computer to see what was on it...
Provingvthat saftey protocols in industrial settings ate non existent. But fortunately they have learned and nothing like tgat will ever hapoen again.
Just kidding, the guys that get promoted are goid with gas, or electric, or uranium, or bullying workers - what ever that particular industry is They don't give a crap about network security - that is someone else's problem.
Yes, the virus itself was very intelligently written so that it could figure out where in the world (and where within the network) it was. Combined with the Human Firewall Element (TM) to break the sneakernet barrier, they did an amazing job with it.
Didn't want to get too technical for the layperson reading the comments, but you get it. :)
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