We received a large number of session proposals describing cyber-physical attacks on ICS. While I’m not crazy about that term, it’s good to see the emphasis on looking at the engineering and automation required to reach the end goal of affecting the process in a meaningful way.
Most of the session proposals and most of the accepted cyber-physical sessions stress the difficulty and work involved in understanding the process and designing and implementing the attack. We selected a variety of sessions based on the novelty of the approach or category of modifying the process, and we expect these sessions to be quite popular with attendees.
Digital Bond Labs’ Reid Wightman, often the contrarian, chose exactly the opposite approach. He looked for a very simple way to cause a physical/process impact on a large number of control systems. His S4x16 session is currently titled “The Easy Button”. It’s such an easy technique that it only needs a 20-minute Main Stage session, and I can’t write more about it without giving it away.
S4x16 registration opens on October 1st. The first 50 tickets are priced at the original S4x07 pricing of $995 (even though S4x16 is now a 3-day event).