Anonymous, NSA Square Off On Power Grid Attacks

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Publicated : 22/11/2024   Category : security


Anonymous, NSA Square Off On Power Grid Attacks


Anonymous calls claim that it might target U.S. power grid ridiculous; security expert says power grid security can already be hacked.



Anonymous: 10 Facts About The Hacktivist Group (click image for larger view and for slideshow)
Could Anonymous add blackouts to its list of accomplishments?
The director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Keith Alexander, has cautioned that within a couple of years, hacktivist collectives such as Anonymous could pose a threat to power grids. His warnings have been made in private White House briefings,
reported
the
Wall Street Journal
.
But the
Anonops blog
, a reliable source of Anonymous-related information, Tuesday disputed that the group had any inclination to crash power grids. Ridiculous! Why should Anonymous shut off power grid? Makes no sense! They just want to make you feel afraid, read a post to the blog.
Indeed, attacking power grids wouldnt seem to square with the groups modus operandi. To date, Anonymous has focused on
sowing the seeds of anarchic online mayhem
largely by doxing--releasing sensitive documents--and launching
distributed denial-of-service
(DDoS) attacks.
[ Anonymous-linked hacktivists recently targeted stock exchanges. Read more at
Anonymous-Backed Attacks Took Nasdaq Website Offline
.]
To date, its targets have largely been symbolic, and its attacks seemingly designed to generate news headlines in support of Anonymous ideals. Accordingly, the group has launched DDoS attacks at
payment card processors
who blocked WikiLeaks funding,
released an audio recording of an FBI conference call
that discussed prosecutions of alleged LulzSec and Anonymous members, and regularly released documents and taken down the public websites of numerous
law enforcement and intelligence agencies
.
Regardless, any talk of potential Anonymous attacks on power grids completely misses the point, said control system security expert Joe Weiss, who heads Applied Control Solutions, via phone. Notably, some of the
industrial control systems
used to manage power grids can already be hacked into using known vulnerabilities.
This whole thing about [how] its going to take [Anonymous] a year or two [to hack the power grid]? Well, it doesnt just have to be Anonymous. Anybody who knows enough about how to use some of these exploits can do that now. Its a scary thought. And that part is being missed.
Notably, Weiss said, published vulnerabilities for numerous control systems are already circulating online. One of the things that just happened--and were talking around Valentines Day--is there were a number of controller vulnerabilities, and exploit code for them was basically put on the Metasploit website, he said.
The bottom line is that these systems are not secure; they were not designed to be secure, said Weiss. Somebody whos knowledgeable can do much more damage than someone whos not knowledgeable, which sounds like a trivial thing. But someone not knowledgeable or who doesnt know what theyre doing can still cause problems. Whether or not theyre Anonymous.
Its no longer a matter of if you get hacked, but when. In this special retrospective of news coverage,
Monitoring Tools And Logs Make All The Difference
, Dark Reading takes a look at ways to measure your security posture and the challenges that lie ahead with the emerging threat landscape. (Free registration required.)

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Anonymous, NSA Square Off On Power Grid Attacks