Destructive Attacks On Oil And Gas Industry A Wake-Up Call

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/destructive-attacks-on-oil-and-gas-indus/240161700

By Kelly Jackson Higgins
Dark Reading
September 23, 2013

Some 30,000 or so hard drives were scrapped and replaced with new ones 
last year on Saudi Aramco's internal corporate network after a massive 
cyberattack destroyed data on the oil and natural gas company's Windows 
machines. While the massive attack didn't directly affect Saudi Aramco's 
oil production and exploration systems, it raised the stakes for the 
increasingly targeted oil and gas industry and also raised concerns of 
possible market fallout from such attacks.

The oil and gas industry today is in the bull's eye of nation-states, 
hacktivists, and even cybercriminals, and, like other energy sectors, its 
industrial control systems are about a decade behind the security curve of 
the traditional IT environment. While Saudi Aramco said the attack was 
isolated to its corporate network and didn't directly affect its 
hydrocarbon exploration and production systems -- which run on isolated 
networks -- the reality is that a successful cyberattack could have ripple 
effects and ultimately result in real-world economic consequences in the 
oil and gas markets, security and oil and gas industry experts say. It 
could either directly or indirectly disrupt production, competition, and, 
ultimately, prices at the pump, they say.

If Stuxnet were the tipping point for ICS/SCADA attacks, then the 
data-destruction attacks on Saudi Aramco and on Qatar's RasGas gas company 
last year represent a major shift from cyberspying on oil and gas 
companies to more widespread destruction of their operations.

"I wonder if that's their Estonia moment," says Richard Bejtlich, CSO at 
incident response provider Mandiant, who says his company has been getting 
more inquiries from Middle East organizations lately. "We're moving beyond 
the stage of, 'This is a problem, and how do we fix it?'"

[...]



--
Find the best InfoSec talent without breaking your
recruiting budget! Post a Job, $99 for 31 days.
Hot InfoSec Jobs - http://www.hotinfosecjobs.com/