This blog was originally posted by me here. __________________________________________________ On October 20th, 2019 the Twitter account @BabakTaghvaee posted that there was a fire at the Abadan Oil Refinery in Iran; notably the account claimed that the fire was a result of a confirmed cyber attack. A video was posted of the fire and the…
“Judgement is what analysts use to fill gaps in their knowledge. It entails going beyond the available information and is the principal means of coping with uncertainty. It always involves an analytical leap, from the known into the uncertain.” – Chapter 4, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, Richards J. Heuer. Analytical leaps, as Richards J.…
Reporting in Ukraine has emerged indicating another suspected cyber attack on the electric grid (the first being the confirmed one in 2015). Initial reporting is often inaccurate or a small view of incidents but it’s worth cautiously watching and seeing what information emerges. Here’s what we know so far: Reports of Suspected Cyber Attack: Around…
Reports that the U.S. government has military hackers ready to carry out attacks on Russian critical infrastructure has elicited a wide range of responses on social media. After I tweeted the NBC article a number of people responded with how stupid the U.S. was for releasing this information, or what poor OPSEC it was to…
A new blog post by SentinelOne made an interesting claim recently regarding a “sophisticated malware campaign specifically targeting at least one European energy company.” More extraordinary though was the claim by the company that this find might indicate something much more serious: “which could either work to extract data or insert the malware to potentially…
For a few years now I’ve spent some energy focusing on calling out hyped up stories of threats to critical infrastructure and dispelling false stories about cyber attacks. There have been a lot of reasons for this including trying to make sure that the investments we make in the community go against real threats and…
This blog was first posted on the SANS ICS blog here. Dr. Yuval Steinitz, the Minister of National Infrastructure, Energy, and Water resources, announced today at the CyberTech Conference in Tel Aviv that a “severe cyber attack” was ongoing on the Israel National Electric Authority. His statements were delivered as a closing session at…
This was first posted on the SANS ICS blog here. A lack of security awareness and the culture that surrounds security is a widely understood problem in the cyber security community. In the ICS community this problem is impactful towards operations and understanding the scope of the threats we face. A recent report by…