Cyber | EnergyNorthwest.com

Identifying control system cyber incidents requires expertise not readily available and government reporting changes

June 13, 2024

Identifying control system incidents as being cyber-related is difficult. It is complicated when government and industry organizations rush to judgement by stating that incidents weren’t cyberattacks without knowing the actual cause or set reporting thresholds that exclude many actual control system cyber incidents. Consequently, it is difficult to identify trends when so many real cases..
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Cybersecurity risks in US critical infrastructure sector call for better skills, technologies, processes – Industrial Cyber

December 11, 2022

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This article (click Read More below) clearly shows the confusion people have with VEX. This article shows that people are conflating and confusing VEX with "Security Advisories". A Security Advisory tells people which products ARE AFFECTED by a new vulnerability. A VEX tells people which products ARE NOT AFFECTED by a new vulnerability. It's a "negative Security..
Energy Central…

What History Tells Us About the Future of Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Power Industry

December 27, 2021

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The power and energy sector is one of the most critical areas of our country’s infrastructure, making it a prime target for cybercriminals increasingly looking for ways to infiltrate and disrupt the sector and ultimately the national grid. In fact, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report in early 2021 that found the grid, and subsequently its distribution systems that carry electricity from transmission systems to end-users, to be growing targets for large-scale, strategic state-sponsored cyber war operations.

This heightened interest and motivation can be attributed to hackers looking for larger ransomware payouts as well as nation states who consider the sector key to crippling the U.S. economy. High-profile attacks like the Colonial Pipeline have given threat actors more motivation to go after critical infrastructure. These groups continue to mature and adopt sophisticated tactics, techniques, and procedures, while industry leaders look to safeguard their critical systems and essential services.

If recent history is any indication of what we can expect in 2022 and beyond, the power and energy sector must prepare for the worst and prioritize their industrial cybersecurity programs accordingly.…

Cyber Risks Are Top of Mind Throughout the Power Sector

September 19, 2020

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The post Cyber Risks Are Top of Mind Throughout the Power Sector appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The electric power sector in the United States has a long history of facing threats to our infrastructure—whether they are natural or man‐made. While cyberthreats are indeed much more complex, particularly when you consider that some of our cyber adversaries are nation states, the industry has a strong foundation of preparedness, resilience, and response. Though much progress has been made, we recognize that the capability of cyber adversaries continues to evolve at a rapid pace and that requires a more strategic approach to this threat.

The electric power sector established the CEO‐led Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC) to tackle strategic, policy, and operational/tactical efforts to prepare for and respond to all threats facing the sector. The ESCC includes representation from utilities of all sizes and accomplishes its objectives of collective defense, collective response, and preparedness and resilience through close coordination at senior levels within the federal government, such as the U.S.…

New Cyber Threat Actor Targeting Power Sector Identified

August 5, 2018

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Cybersecurity experts have identified a new activity group that they say is targeting access operations at electric utilities in the U.S., Europe, Middle East, and East Asia.

Cybersecurity firm Dragos Inc. told POWER on August 1 that though it has confirmed that the group—which it dubbed “RASPITE”—is actively targeting electric utilities, “there is no current indication the group has the capability” to conduct destructive widespread blackouts like those in Ukraine in 2016. Dragos added, “Operations against electric utility organizations appear limited to the U.S. at this time.”

Symantec, another security firm, calls the group, “Leafminer.” On July 25, Symantec said in a blog post that the group’s activity remains centered on the Middle East, mostly in Saudi Arabia—noting that threat is likely being perpetrated by Iranian actors. “One interesting source of target information discovered during the Leafminer investigation was a list of 809 targets used by the attackers for vulnerability scans,” it said. “The list is written in the Iranian language Farsi and groups each entry with organization of interest by geography and industry.”…

Russian Cyber Actors Preying on Network Devices, Authorities Warn

April 23, 2018

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Russian state-sponsored cyber actors are exploiting routers and other network infrastructure devices worldwide to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks that specifically target critical infrastructure providers and other sectors, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI, and the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) warned in a new joint technical alert.

In the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) report issued on April 16, and revised on April 18, the FBI explicitly emphasizes it has “high confidence that Russian state-sponsored cyber actors are using compromised routers to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks, and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations.”

The report, a result of analytic efforts by the U.S. and UK entities that identifies victims through a coordinated series of actions between U.S. and international partners, urges readers to act on past alerts and advisories issued by the U.S., the UK, and “allied governments,” along with reports issued by network device manufacturers and private sector security organizations.…