Hacking campaign on nuclear, defense sectors shares Lazarus Group tools, report says

Hackers behind a new campaign of cyberattacks that have targeted international critical infrastructure facilities are using malicious code linked to North Korea, according to research published Wednesday. Researchers from McAfee said “Operation Sharpshooter” has numerous technical links to the Lazarus Group, the group of suspected North Korean government hackers blamed for the 2014 breach at Sony Pictures and other well-publicized attacks. Operation Sharpshooter used a hacking tool called “Rising Sun” to target 87 organizations, mostly in the U.S., between October and November of this year, McAfee said. The cybersecurity vendor did not flatly tie this campaign to the North Korean government. “Attributing an attack to any threat group is often riddled with challenges, including potential ‘false flag’ operations by other threat actors,” the research states. “Technical evidence alone is not sufficient to attribute this activity with high confidence. However, based on our analysis, this operation shares multiple striking similarities with […]

The post Hacking campaign on nuclear, defense sectors shares Lazarus Group tools, report says appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Hacking campaign on nuclear, defense sectors shares Lazarus Group tools, report says

Fail of the Week: A Candle Caused Browns Ferry Nuclear Incident

A colleague of mine used to say he juggled a lot of balls; steel balls, plastic balls, glass balls, and paper balls. The trick was not to drop the glass balls. How do you know which is which? For example, suppose you were tasked with making sure a nuclear power plant was safe. What would be important? A fail-safe way to drop the control rods into the pile, maybe? A thick containment wall? Two loops of cooling so that only the inner loop gets radioactive? I’m not a nuclear engineer, so I don’t know, but ensuring electricians at a nuclear …read more

Continue reading Fail of the Week: A Candle Caused Browns Ferry Nuclear Incident

Fail of the Week: A Candle Caused Browns Ferry Nuclear Incident

A colleague of mine used to say he juggled a lot of balls; steel balls, plastic balls, glass balls, and paper balls. The trick was not to drop the glass balls. How do you know which is which? For example, suppose you were tasked with making sure a nuclear power plant was safe. What would be important? A fail-safe way to drop the control rods into the pile, maybe? A thick containment wall? Two loops of cooling so that only the inner loop gets radioactive? I’m not a nuclear engineer, so I don’t know, but ensuring electricians at a nuclear …read more

Continue reading Fail of the Week: A Candle Caused Browns Ferry Nuclear Incident

Project Orion: Detonating Nuclear Bombs For Thrust

Rockets with nuclear bombs for propulsion sounds like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, but it has been seriously considered as an option for the space program. Chemical rockets combust a fuel with an oxidizer within themselves and exhaust the result out the back, causing the rocket to move in the opposite direction. What if instead, you used the higher energy density of nuclear fission by detonating nuclear bombs?

Detonating the bombs within a combustion chamber would destroy the vehicle so instead you’d do so from outside and behind. Each bomb would include a little propellant which would be thrown as …read more

Continue reading Project Orion: Detonating Nuclear Bombs For Thrust

Nuclear Power Plants Have a ‘Blind Spot’ for Hackers. Here’s How to Fix That.

Malware hunters, regulators, and plant employees are hunting further down the supply chain for vulnerabilities as hackers continue to target critical infrastructure. Continue reading Nuclear Power Plants Have a ‘Blind Spot’ for Hackers. Here’s How to Fix That.