DEFCON NEWS FLASH: New Flaw Leaves Oil Refineries, Power Plants Vulnerable!
Posted on: August 4th, 2007 by Lynn AsburyDEFCON NEWS FLASH: New Flaw Leaves Oil Refineries, Power Plants Vulnerable!
Ganesh Devarajan, a security researcher with 3Com Corp.’s TippingPoint in Austin, Texas, exposed a security flaw that could allow terroists to hijack massive computer systems which are typically used to administer important day-to-day national functions such as: oil refineries, power plants and factories.
The target vulnerability is SCADA, special software used for supervisory control and data acquisition. Devarajan released the security flaw at the current Defcon hacker conference on computer security.
Mr. Devarajan is quoted by Jordan Robertson of Associated Press as saying: “SCADA systems are scary because they control your day-to-day life,” … “And they use lightweight software — all you need to do is send some false requests and you can talk to them easily. These are scary threats.”
Isn’t is interesting that this security alert came from a hackers conference?
I am still in awe of this event, in that, federal agents and corporate executives mingle with and trade information with mostly renegade geek-hackers.
Lynn Asbury
Earl Grey
This is something that poeple dont normally think about.
Banks, hospitals and the general infastructure is insecure and something needs doing about it.
fantomaster
Yes, it’s actually the whole WWW 1.0 experience all over again - seems that even the people who should know better (e.g. developers, corporate and public adopters etc.) aren’t investing even the slightest effort into doing it right from the start.