The 2010s, When Hacking Moved from “Novelty” to “Fact of Life”

With the 2010s coming to a close, Wired magazine takes its readers on “an anxiety-inducing stroll” through a review of some of the worst hacks that occurred in the last decade. It notes that these hacks demonstrated that cyber incidents have become less of a novelty and more of a fact of life for billions of people around the world. One of the incidents revisited by Wired is that involving the Stuxnet malware that caused physical damage to equipment at a nuclear enrichment facility, a kind of attack that experts have warned could be conducted in other industrial settings. Two of the other incidents covered by Wired involve physical impacts in industrial settings, specifically Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s electric grid, first with a suite of malware referred to as “BlackEnergy” (WaterISAC’s reporting on this incident includes a summary of articles and advisories) and the second with a more evolved malware known as “CrashOverride” or “Industroyer” (WaterISAC’s reporting on this incident includes a review of an updated report by industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos, which was published in September 2019). Other significant incidents covered by Wired include the Shamoon wiper attack, the Sony hack, and the Office of Personnel Management data breach. Read the article at Wired.