411
Offer Upgrade
User ID: 70591412 United States 01/04/2016 07:34 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | First known hacker-caused power outage. Highly destructive malware creates "destructive events" at 3 Ukrainian substations First known hacker-caused power outage signals troubling escalationHighly destructive malware that infected at least three regional power authorities in Ukraine led to a power failure that left hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity last week, researchers said. The outage left about half of the homes in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine without electricity, Ukrainian news service TSN reported in an article posted a day after the December 23 failure. The report went on to say that the outage was the result of malware that disconnected electrical substations. On Monday, researchers from security firm iSIGHT Partners said they had obtained samples of the malicious code that infected at least three regional operators. They said the malware led to "destructive events" that in turn caused the blackout. If confirmed it would be the first known instance of someone using malware to generate a power outage. "It's a milestone because we've definitely seen targeted destructive events against energy before—oil firms, for instance—but never the event which causes the blackout," John Hultquist, head of iSIGHT's cyber espionage intelligence practice, told Ars. "It's the major scenario we've all been concerned about for so long." Researchers from antivirus provider ESET have confirmed that multiple Ukrainian power authorities were infected by "BlackEnergy," a package discovered in 2007 that was updated two years ago to include a host of new functions, including the ability to render infected computers unbootable. More recently, ESET found, the malware was updated again to add a component dubbed KillDisk, which destroys critical parts of a computer hard drive and also appears to have functions that sabotage industrial control systems. The latest BlackEnergy also includes a backdoored secure shell (SSH) utility that gives attackers permanent access to infected computers.MORE.... [ link to arstechnica.com] "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." --William Pitt |
411
(OP)
User ID: 70591412 United States 01/04/2016 09:53 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: First known hacker-caused power outage. Highly destructive malware creates "destructive events" at 3 Ukrainian substations "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." --William Pitt |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 67216665 United States 01/04/2016 09:58 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: First known hacker-caused power outage. Highly destructive malware creates "destructive events" at 3 Ukrainian substations I think it's something like 9 substations going down can disable our entire grid in the US. |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 71447844 United States 02/29/2016 10:28 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: First known hacker-caused power outage. Highly destructive malware creates "destructive events" at 3 Ukrainian substations Uh oh it's the Islamic state. |