In August, a petrochemical company with a plant in Saudi Arabia was hit by a new kind of cyberassault. The attack was not designed to simply destroy data or shut down the plant but it was meant to sabotage the firm’s operations and trigger an explosion.
The attackers were sophisticated and had plenty of time and resources, an indication that they were most likely supported by a government, according to more than a dozen people, including cybersecurity experts who have looked into the attack and asked not to be identified because of the confidentiality of the continuing investigation.
Image for representative purpose only
The only thing that prevented an explosion was a mistake in the attackers’ computer code. The assault was the most alarming in a string of hacking attacks on petrochemical plants in Saudi Arabia.
In January 2017, computers went dark at the National Industrialization Company which is one of the few privately owned Saudi petrochemical companies. Computers also crashed 15 miles away at Sadara Chemical Company, a joint venture between the oil and chemical giants Saudi Aramco and Dow Chemical.
The hard drives inside the company’s computers were destroyed and their data wiped clean within minutes of the attack at Tasnee.
Mandiant, a division of the security firm FireEye is still investigating. A team at Schneider Electric, which made the industrial systems that were targeted, called Triconex safety controllers, is also looking into the attack. The National Security Agency, the F.B.I., the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which has been supporting research into forensic tools designed to assist hacking investigations.
Attackers compromised Schneider’s Triconex controllers, which keep equipment operating safely by performing tasks like regulating voltage, pressure and temperatures. Those controllers are used in about 18,000 plants around the world, including nuclear and water treatment facilities, oil and gas refineries, and chemical plants.
Source- The New York Times
The attackers were sophisticated and had plenty of time and resources, an indication that they were most likely supported by a government, according to more than a dozen people, including cybersecurity experts who have looked into the attack and asked not to be identified because of the confidentiality of the continuing investigation.
The only thing that prevented an explosion was a mistake in the attackers’ computer code. The assault was the most alarming in a string of hacking attacks on petrochemical plants in Saudi Arabia.
In January 2017, computers went dark at the National Industrialization Company which is one of the few privately owned Saudi petrochemical companies. Computers also crashed 15 miles away at Sadara Chemical Company, a joint venture between the oil and chemical giants Saudi Aramco and Dow Chemical.
The hard drives inside the company’s computers were destroyed and their data wiped clean within minutes of the attack at Tasnee.
Mandiant, a division of the security firm FireEye is still investigating. A team at Schneider Electric, which made the industrial systems that were targeted, called Triconex safety controllers, is also looking into the attack. The National Security Agency, the F.B.I., the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which has been supporting research into forensic tools designed to assist hacking investigations.
Attackers compromised Schneider’s Triconex controllers, which keep equipment operating safely by performing tasks like regulating voltage, pressure and temperatures. Those controllers are used in about 18,000 plants around the world, including nuclear and water treatment facilities, oil and gas refineries, and chemical plants.
Source- The New York Times
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