S4x13 generated a lot of news and was great fun this week. Amazing hanging out with so many smart and interesting people in ICSsec. I’ve got a ton of notes and interesting items for articles next week. And we will start posting the videos on the S4x13 Vimeo channel next week.
Cylance announced the hiring of Eric Cornelius of DHS and the acquisition of Spearpoint. The latter brings them Billy Rios and Terry McCorkle of HMI hacking and Tridium vuln fame. Billy and Terry were very busy at S4 this week teaching, presenting and dealing with the press. Cylance joins IOActive in the race to collect serious technical talent aimed at ICS software / hardware analysis.
DHS announced an infected USB stick took out a power plant for three weeks according to a Reuters article.
Renew Grid has good statistics on how the $3.4B the US gave to the utilities has been spent. For example, 65.8% was spent on AMI. Or “A 2004 Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) report estimated it would cost $165 billion to develop smart grid infrastructure through 2020. In 2011, EPRI updated this estimate to between $338 and $476 billion. A 2008 Brattle Group report estimated that expanding transmission and distribution with smart grid capabilities would cost $880 billion.”
ISS Source reports that Lockheed Martin, AT&T and Century Link are the first companies to sign up for a US Government program to provide classified threat signatures to private industry.
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Worth Reading Articles
- Dark Reading’s Spear Phishing Experiment Targets, Hooks Energy Firms
- Kaspersky’s The Red October Campaign
- Dark Reading’s Security Researchers Expose Bug In Medical System
Critical Intelligence’s ICS Security Event Calendar Updates
- American Public Power Association’s 2013 Engineering & Operations Technical Conference, Mar 24-27 in Kissimmee, Florida
Critical Intelligence provides reports and other information products on Cyber Situational Awareness and Threat Intelligence services for Industrial Control System Owner/Operators, Vendors and Government stakeholders.
Image by Luigi Lombardi