14 DAY TRIAL // A recent bulletin issued by the Department of Homeland Security and published by Public Intelligence, reveals the fears of the agency concerning some threats launched by the Anonymous hacker group, claiming their next target to be the national industrial control systems (ICS).
The authors of the paper believe that so far, the cybercriminals haven't demonstrated that they're capable of accessing industrial systems, their operations being limited to hacking internet accessible systems through the use of denial of service attacks.
“Anonymous’ increased interest may indicate intent to develop an offensive ICS capability in the future. ICS-CERT assesses that the publically available information regarding exploitation of ICS could be leveraged to reduce the amount of time to develop offensive ICS capabilities. However, the lack of centralized leadership/coordination and specific expertise may pose challenges to this effort,” reads the paper.
A clear clue towards the fact that they might be perfecting their techniques is the Twitter message posted in July 2011 that proves they were able to obtain the directory tree for Siemens SIMATIC software.
The Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS- CERT) studied the post and concluded that the information could have come from a personal computer instead of a control system, but they noted the fact that the perpetrator had a clear understanding of the codes and files he published.
The greatest fear is that “experienced and skilled members of Anonymous in hacking could be able to develop capabilities to gain access and trespass on control system networks very quickly.
“Free educational opportunities (conferences, classes), presentations at hacker conferences, and other high profile events/media coverage have raised awareness to ICS vulnerabilities, and likely shortened the time needed to develop sufficient tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to disrupt ICS.”
Finally, the document, intended for official use only, advises the owners and operators of critical infrastructure control systems to address the matters relating to the security of their networks.