Security Experts believe a new Era of warfare is here that combines destructive military might with malicious cyberattacks. Triton, a sophisticated malware on par with the likes of Stuxnet, that almost took down a petrol chemical plant in Saudi Arabia last August was the first shot across the bow. Triton was able to penetrate the safety system’s firmware at the petrol chemical plant and injected a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that would allow it to receive instructions from outside the plant through an electronic backdoor. Had it not been for a flaw in the software that cause part of the system to crash, operators would not have known if was there until it was too late. Andrea Carcano, Co-Found and Chief Product Officer at Nozomi Networks commented below.
Andrea Carcano, Co-Found and Chief Product Officer at Nozomi Networks:
“There is evidence of heightened focus from attackers against critical infrastructure with concern that each attempt to infiltrate these networks and systems means mistakes are being learned, and attacks improved. Doing nothing is not an option, nor is it what is happening within these environments particularly with the NIS Directive being implemented in the UK later this year. That said, it’s not without its challenges as much of the Operational Technology environment includes legacy infrastructure designed long before the hybrid and interconnected networks of today were even dreamed possible. Securing the complicated myriad of ‘what ifs’ might seem an insurmountable challenge, but with technical advances, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, it is possible. As part of an ICS cybersecurity solution, these advances enable proactive threat hunting and behaviour-based anomaly detection to advance at the pace of new and evolving threats. These technologies need to be implemented now before the next cyberattack, state sponsored or otherwise, hits its mark and the general public pays the price.”
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