All news with #scada tag

Hacktivists Target Internet-Exposed Industrial Controls

⚠️ The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security warns hacktivists are increasingly exploiting internet-accessible industrial control systems (ICS), citing recent intrusions that affected a water utility, an oil and gas automated tank gauge (ATG), and a farm's grain-drying silo. Attackers manipulated pressure, fuel-gauge, and environmental controls, creating safety and service disruptions. The alert urges secure remote access via VPNs with MFA and inventories of OT assets. Provincial and municipal coordination is recommended to protect sectors lacking cybersecurity oversight.

Hacktivist Group TwoNet Targets Critical Infrastructure

🔍 Forescout observed pro‑Russian hacktivist group TwoNet compromise a realistic water‑treatment honeypot in September, moving from initial access to disruptive actions in roughly 26 hours. The attackers used default credentials and SQL enumeration, then exploited a stored XSS (CVE-2021-26829) to display the message "Hacked by Barlati," altered HMI PLC setpoints and disabled real‑time updates and logs. Researchers urge strong authentication, network segmentation, IP-based ACLs for admin interfaces, and protocol-aware detection to spot exploitation and HMI changes.

Open-Source OT Security: Cost-Effective Industrial Defense

🔒 Open-source tools can provide a cost-effective, flexible foundation for operational technology (OT) security in industrial environments. By combining passive asset discovery, protocol-aware inspection, IDS/IPS, centralized logging and vulnerability management, organizations can approximate many capabilities of expensive commercial offerings. Recommended components include Malcolm (with Zeek), Security Onion, ELK, Wazuh and OpenVAS, augmented by asset sources like NetBox. Successful deployment requires experienced OT/IT teams or external consultants to configure, tune and maintain the stack, and is not a plug-and-play substitute for vendor support.