It’s been a really bad month (and year) for OT cybersecurity. From a wave of new, high-impact vulnerabilities, to attacks on supermarket refrigerators, to attacks on blood banks, we’ve …

Over the last ten years, we’ve lived through the rapid adoption of remote connectivity in industrial environments around the world.

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Now that we understand the chaos of connectivity in modern industrial environments, we can talk about what’s getting hacked right now, and why. Why water? Why refrigerators?

A few unfortunate, incredibly predictable factors have led us here, and my colleagues and I have been screaming about them for years: [ …]

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Fixing the vulnerability isn’t easy, even if the organisation is aware of it. Industrial systems have long lifecycles, sometimes 10 to 30 years. They’re engineered and tested by the OEM to work in a very specific technology stack and topology. Any alteration can, at best, disrupt the process and, at worst, lead to injury or death. Either outcome can be far more damaging than a casual hacker. Because of these lifecycles, and the inability to replace systems, I still deal with Windows 2000, CE, and XP every week. They can’t be removed from production or modified without express authorisation from the OEM and engineers, plus a significant outage and testing window.

    • pianoplant@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      4 hours ago

      That’s one of the two definitions, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gap_(networking) And https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/air-gap

      air-gapped networks are networks that have been isolated from all external networks, including cloud and wifi. Air-gapped networks are disconnected from the internet and provide a strong layer of protection from a broad range of cybersecurity threats.

      In any case, pedantry aside the point stands that it’s possible to connect these in a way that’s isolated from the public internet.

      • notgold@aussie.zoneEnglish
        3·
        3 hours ago

        These are pretty frequently used well in most utilities I’ve been around. What scares me is their faith in the cellular telcos to keep everything secure so they don’t lock down the devices connected to that modem. 🤦

        • pianoplant@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          3 hours ago

          Yeah absolutely. I’ve seen that as well and it’s very concerning. You need layers of security. Especially if the private APN doesn’t have P2P traffic blocked, as otherwise a single field-compromised device becomes an ingress point.

          Nonetheless, miles better than devices on the public net. Especially when compared to devices with public static IPs that don’t even have the protection of the carrier’s cg-nat.