Apr 19 2021

Experts demonstrated how to hack a utility and take over a smart meter

Category: Grid VulnerabilitiesDISC @ 3:19 pm

Researchers from the FireEye’s Mandiant team have breached the network of a North American utility and turn off one of its smart meters.

Over the years, the number of attacks against ICS/SCADA systems used by industrial organizations worldwide has rapidly increased. Many security firms highlighted the risks related to attacks targeting OT networks used in utilities.

Among the most clamorous attacks against industrial organizations, there is the 2015 attack against the electric grid in Ukraine and the 2017 Triton attack against a Saudi petrochemical plant.

Recently FireEye’s incident response unit Mandiant demonstrated how to infiltrate the network of a North American utility and hack into its industrial control systems to turn off one of its smart meters.

The scope of the test was to demonstrate tactics, techniques, and procedures used by threat actors to breach the protected perimeter between an IT network and an OT network.

In the first phase of the attack, the Mandiant team adopted techniques used by TEMP.Veles to breach the OT network during the TRITON attack.

“Mandiant’s experience during red team engagements highlights that collecting information from IT network assets plays a crucial role in targeted OT attacks. As a result, the internal reconnaissance phase for OT targeted attacks begins in the enterprise network, where the actor obtains knowledge and resources to propagate from an initial compromise in the IT network to remote access in the OT network.” states the FireEye’s report. “Detailed information collected about the target, their security operations, and their environment can also support an actor’s attempts at remaining undetected while expanding operations.”

Mandiant’s red team initially targeted the external-facing IT network, then attempted to gain access to the OT network.

Tags: Smart meters

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