The NY Times reported NSA Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers. This program fits perfectly into my Preparation and Persistence talk at ICSage and the motivation behind the PLCpwn. I’ll have more on this when we post the PLCpwn video, but readers can think about the need to create and deploy weapons before they are needed. And then the ability to monitor and activate the weapons.
SANS has published the agenda for their ICS Security Summit, March 17-18 in Orlando. Ever since Michael Assante became the Director of ICS/SCADA at SANS the event agenda has improved. There are also numerous training options before the event. SANS must believe this space has good business potential as they are adding SANS courses and certifications on ICS security.
It’s a double shot for Assante this week. NexDefense, a company Michael co-founded, signed an agreement with Battelle/INL for the exclusive rights to commercialize Sofia. Odd business choice for Battelle/INL as this is a small, new company without customers or distribution channels. There may not have been many interested parties as this technology has existed in multiple other security products for years. The most noteworthy part of this is Sofia is the program that launched the Thuen/Battelle battle where a court issued an injunction because Thuen’s website said they like to hack things.
Joel Langill covers the latest Gleg release of the Agora SCADA+ pack for the Canvas exploit framework. Gleg is putting out new exploit modules almost every month.
Lost in our reporting over the holidays was the DHS procurement activity for Cyber Centric Mission Support Services. Check out task 6 in this Word document — 8,000 hours of Cybersecurity Vulnerability Assessments of ICS.
Mandiant, now a Fireeye company, is staffing up the ICS security team by grabbing Dan Scali from GE and Chris Sistrunk from Entergy.
Image by chrisinplymouth