Trisis has the security world spooked, stumped and searching for answers

At first, technicians at multinational energy giant Schneider Electric thought they were looking at the everyday software used to manage equipment inside nuclear and petroleum plants around the world. They had no idea that the code carried the most dangerous industrial malware on the planet. More than four months have passed since a novel, highly sophisticated piece of malware forced an important oil and gas facility in the Middle East to suddenly shut down, but cybersecurity analysts still don’t know who wrote the code. Since last August, multiple teams of researchers in the public and private sectors have been examining what the perpetrators planted inside a nondescript Saudi computer network. It’s a rare case involving a computer virus specially engineered to sabotage industrial control systems (ICS) — the gear that keeps factories and refineries running. Manipulating these systems can have a destructive impact far beyond the network. Today, the incident’s magnitude and implications are […]

The post Trisis has the security world spooked, stumped and searching for answers appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading Trisis has the security world spooked, stumped and searching for answers

From BlackEnergy to ExPetr

To date, nobody has been able to find any significant code sharing between ExPetr/Petya and older malware. Given our love for unsolved mysteries, we jumped right on it. We’d like to think of this ongoing research as an opportunity for an open invitation to the larger security community to help nail down (or disprove) the link between BlackEnergy and ExPetr/Petya. Continue reading From BlackEnergy to ExPetr

Researchers find cyberweapon capable of knocking out electric grids

A newly discovered malware framework, which some believe carries signs of Russian authorship, can be used by hackers to disrupt industrial control systems and cause mass power outages, according to research conducted by cybersecurity firms Dragos Inc. and ESET. The findings are significant because they represent the first known real-world case of a computer virus designed to directly interact with electric grid hardware, explained Sergio Caltagirone, director of threat intelligence for Dragos. Researchers believe that a version of the malware framework, dubbed “CrashOverride” or “Industroyer,” was previously leveraged to hack into an electric transmission station in Ukraine causing a black out for several hours last December in neighborhoods just north of Kiev. Evidence of a connection between CrashOverride’s author and the attackers behind last year’s Ukrainian power grid incident exists, according to Caltagirone, but was not published in Dragos’ technical analysis. In January, iSight Partners, a subsidiary of U.S. cybersecurity […]

The post Researchers find cyberweapon capable of knocking out electric grids appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading Researchers find cyberweapon capable of knocking out electric grids

Researchers find cyberweapon capable of knocking out electric grids

A newly discovered malware framework, which some believe carries signs of Russian authorship, can be used by hackers to disrupt industrial control systems and cause mass power outages, according to research conducted by cybersecurity firms Dragos Inc. and ESET. The findings are significant because they represent the first known real-world case of a computer virus designed to directly interact with electric grid hardware, explained Sergio Caltagirone, director of threat intelligence for Dragos. Researchers believe that a version of the malware framework, dubbed “CrashOverride” or “Industroyer,” was previously leveraged to hack into an electric transmission station in Ukraine causing a black out for several hours last December in neighborhoods just north of Kiev. Evidence of a connection between CrashOverride’s author and the attackers behind last year’s Ukrainian power grid incident exists, according to Caltagirone, but was not published in Dragos’ technical analysis. In January, iSight Partners, a subsidiary of U.S. cybersecurity […]

The post Researchers find cyberweapon capable of knocking out electric grids appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading Researchers find cyberweapon capable of knocking out electric grids

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2016. Review of the year. Overall statistics for 2016

2016 was a tense and turbulent year in cyberspace – from the massive IoT botnets and ransomware to targeted cyberespionage attacks, financial theft, ‘hacktivism’ and more. Kaspersky Lab’s Review of the Year and Statistics provide a detailed review – you can read the Executive Summary here. Continue reading Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2016. Review of the year. Overall statistics for 2016