attacker

Last week Jason Holcomb at Digital Bond wrote a great article called “Everybody Knows Your Passwords” on the issues of default passwords. In it he talked about how some control system vendors continue to bury hidden “default” passwords in their system. As Stuxnet illustrated, these passwords can be later accessed by malware or hackers, making them the perfect backdoor into a company’s operations.

We had a request recently from a reader to provide an example of a malicious attack by outsiders on a control system, how it was done, and what impact it had on the plant and the owner. This is surprisingly tough to do, because according to RISI the vast majority of security incidents are internal and/or accidental in nature. Additionally, people whose control systems have been hacked do not like to talk about it - why give attackers more info and ideas than they already have?