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.

  • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    2 hours ago

    There is absolutely no excuse for generated passwords like the day’s date. That is NOT A PASSWORD. And if that is considered a sufficient password, then they should not have even bothered with a password.

  • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOPEnglish
    9·
    3 hours ago

    The mess is metaphorically a result of a kind of hasty, brainless merger of the mindsets of Internet and server companies with those of companies that construct field buses and factory floors. These two ways of connecting things are not very compatible. And the factory floor corps don’t even understand why security is necessary.

    To sum it up, the problem is systemic. It is not just that Danish connected thermostat manufacturer.