HACKERS! Hackers target German steel plant; cause massive physical damage

2015 is going to be the Year of Fear!

[link to www.neowin.net]

Here’s a fun thing to think about: almost all aspects of our lives are controlled by and rely on computers. From the water treatment plant, to the nuclear power station, to the systems that help our planes and cars know where they’re going, all of that’s digital, meaning all of that is hackable.

Authorities in Germany learned this the hard way last year when a cyberattack on an industrial plant ended up causing “massive” physical damage. This is only the second time when a digital attack resulted in confirmed physical damages, the first time being when the Stuxnet virus infiltrated some Iranian systems at an uranium enrichment plant.

The report from Germany, which detailed and confirmed this attack, fails to elaborate on what the actual damage was, or on what the hackers were after. The attack took place on a not-identified steel mill with the attack leaving one of the mill’s furnaces “unable to shut down in a regulated manner”. It’s not clear if this was indeed intended or just a side-effect of the systems being hacked into.

The report also explains that the hackers gained control over critical systems by using a spear phishing attack and infiltrating the plant’s business network. After that they managed to get access to the production network.