In terms of malware, Emotet has been among the greatest threats to water and wastewater utilities in recent months, infecting systems and deploying other types of malware. In one well-document example, in October 2018 Emotet dropped the Ryuk ransomware into the IT system for a North Carolina water utility (WaterISAC created a page on its portal and hosted presentations during webcasts in October and November about this incident).
IT cybersecurity policies and processes do not directly translate to the OT environment, but that does not mean they are not useful. In a recent post, industrial cybersecurity firm Verve Industrial Protection suggests there is great value in applying the rigor of IT systems management to OT systems. As industrial organizations embrace the need for OT specific policies, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Well-developed IT policies should be used as a starting point and adapted for OT environments.
Today, industrial cybersecurity firm Waterfall Security Solutions announced their Industrial Security Podcast. The podcast will feature interviews with world-recognized experts addressing current and developing ICS cybersecurity topics, such as IIoT, governance, IT/OT integration, and ICS vulnerabilities. The podcast is hosted by Andrew Ginter, VP Industrial Security at Waterfall Security. Episodes will be released every two to three weeks with new experts and new topics.
In its just released Security Intelligence Report (SIR), Microsoft points to supply chain attacks as being responsible for numerous high-profile incidents in 2018. These included a massive campaign to deliver the Dofoil Trojan through a peer-to-peer application’s update package. Dofoil carried a cryptocurrency mining payload and exhibited advanced cross-process injection techniques, persistence mechanisms, and evasion techniques.
At the RSA security conference in San Francisco yesterday, the National Security Agency (NSA) released “Ghidra,” a free software reverse engineering tool that the agency had been using internally for well over a decade. The tool is ideal for software engineers but will be especially useful for malware analysts. Ghidra is a free alternative to IDA Pro, a similar reverse engineering tool that's only available under a very expensive commercial license, priced in the range of thousands of U.S. dollars per year.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has issued a memorandum for owners and operators of U.S. critical infrastructure that use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) from Global Positioning System (GPS) devices. The memorandum is intended to assist owners and operators with preparations for a GPS “Week Number Rollover” that is scheduled to occur on April 6, 2019, as this event may impact the reliability of the reported UTC.
March 5, 2019
The NCCIC has updated this advisory with additional technical details of the affected products and mitigating measures. Read the advisory at NCCIC/ICS-CERT.
January 31, 2019
The NCCIC has released an advisory on a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in Rockwell Automation RSLinx Classic. Versions 4.10.00 and prior are affected. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the target device. Rockwell Automation has released patches to address earlier versions of RSLinx Classic including v3.60, v3.70, v3.80, v3.81, v3.90, v4.00.01, v4.10. The NCCIC also advises on a series of measures for mitigating this vulnerability.
An article from the MIT Technology Review on Triton malware includes commentary from Julian Gutmanis, a cybersecurity consultant who was hired by a petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia to assist with the response to a cyber attack on its system by the malware. Triton is unique from other types of malware targeting industrial control systems because it seeks to compromise safety instrumented systems, which keep operations running at safe levels and can shut down systems altogether to prevent life-threatening disasters.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has launched its annual awareness campaign on the 12 most prevalent tax scams, known as the “Dirty Dozen.” As part of the campaign, IRS will highlight one scam each weekday. The first topic in the campaign focuses on internet phishing scams that lead to tax fraud and identity theft. IRS warns to be on alert for a continuing surge of fake emails, texts, websites, and social media attempts to steal users’ personal information.
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