Defending the Power Grid From Hackers – Jul 2018

Cyber defense facilities today are very strong and effecive to fight against different of cyber attacks. Even though stealer deploy DNS steal technique to exfiltrate the data from a firm. Anti cyber technology have their way to quarantine and deny such activities. Perhaps you said the IoT devices attack that wreaked hovac worldwide. It is hard to avoid. But it still have resolution. Cyber security vendor deploy network discover facitiles. No matter Dot one X or non Dot one X devices they can find. So it looks perfect, no any concern any more. But why we still have cyber attack incident happens today?

The Next Cyber Battleground

Sound scary! The Next Cyber Battleground
Expert predict that digital infrastructure is the high target to receive cyber attack. That is even through smart City, manufacturing automation, geospatial data system,..etc.

Some experts believe cyber incidents go underreported in the nuclear sector. The reason is that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission only requires the reporting of incidents that affect the safety, security functions, or emergency preparedness of the plant. May be it do not want to caused a public panic.

We heard cyber attack to SCADA in frequent. Whether SCADA contains design weakness or there is other factor?

The SCADA Data Gateway (SDG) is a Windows™ application used by System Integrators and Utilities to collect data from OPC, IEC 60870-6 (TASE.2/ICCP), IEC 61850, IEC 60870-5, DNP3, or Modbus Server/Slave devices and then supplies this data to other control systems supporting OPC, IEC 60870-6 (TASE.2/ICCP) Client, IEC 60870-5, DNP3, and/or Modbus Client/Master communication protocols.

The core component supporting SCADA infrastructure build by Microsoft products in common. And therefore the attack surface will be divided in several ways. We understand that Nuclear facilties do not provided any public web portal. So direct attacks looks not possible. However Microsoft office products has full market coverage in the world. It is rare that people not using MS-Word for word processing work, right? As a matter of fact, hacker now transform MS office product become a cyber attack media. They re-use former MS office vulnerabilities. It has possibilities execute the Infiltration. From technical point of view, even though attacker send out the RTF format of file. It is also workable.

Remark: RTF is a text file format used by Microsoft products, such as Word and Office. RTF, or Rich Text Format, files were developed by Microsoft in 1987 for use in their products and for cross-platform document interchange. RTF is readable by most word processors.

Quote:

Hackers are using Microsoft Word documents (or more specifically, RTF files listed with a “.doc” extension) to trick people into opening the files.

On this discussion objective, I am not going to drill into any technical details. But our aim would like to provides hints see whether it can enrich the security awareness.
Below details common bad mailicious MS-word documents checklist for reference.

722154A36F32BA10E98020A8AD758A7A MD5 FILENAME:CV Controls Engineer.docx
243511A51088D57E6DF08D5EF52D5499 MD5 FILENAME:CV Control Engeneer.docx
277256F905D7CB07CDCD096CECC27E76 MD5 FILENAME:CV Jon Patrick.docx
4909DB36F71106379832C8CA57BA5BE8 MD5 FILENAME:Controls Engineer.docx
4E4E9AAC289F1C55E50227E2DE66463B MD5 FILENAME:Controls Engineer.docx
5C6A887A91B18289A70BDD29CC86EBDB MD5 FILENAME:High R-Value Energy.docx
6C3C58F168E883AF1294BBCEA33B03E6 MD5 FILENAME:CV_Jon_Patrick.docx
78E90308FF107CE38089DFF16A929431 MD5 FILENAME:CV Jon Patrick.docx
90514DEE65CAF923E829F1E0094D2585 MD5 FILENAME:CV_Jon_Patrick.docx
C1529353E33FD3C0D2802BB558414F11 MD5 FILENAME:Build Hydroelectric Turbine.docx
CDA0B7FBDBDCEF1777657182A504283D MD5 FILENAME:Resume_Key_And_Personal.docx
DDE2A6AC540643E2428976B778C43D39 MD5 FILENAME:CV_Jon_Patrick.docx
E9A906082DF6383AA8D5DE60F6EF830E MD5 FILENAME:CV_Jon_Patrick.docx
038A97B4E2F37F34B255F0643E49FC9D MD5 FILENAME:Controls Engineer (2).docx
31008DE622CA9526F5F4A1DD3F16F4EA MD5 FILENAME:Controls Engineer (4).docx
5ACC56C93C5BA1318DD2FA9C3509D60B MD5 FILENAME:Controls Engineer (7).docx
65A1A73253F04354886F375B59550B46 MD5 FILENAME:Controls Engineer (3).docx
8341E48A6B91750D99A8295C97FD55D5 MD5 FILENAME:Controls Engineer (5).docx
99AA0D0ECEEFCE4C0856532181B449B1 MD5 FILENAME:Controls Engineer (8).docx
A6D36749EEBBBC51B552E5803ED1FD58 MD5 FILENAME:Controls Engineeer.docx
3C432A21CFD05F976AF8C47A007928F7 MD5 FILENAME:Report03-23-2017.docx
34A11F3D68FD6CDEF04B6DF17BBE8F4D MD5 FILENAME:corp_rules(2016).docx
141E78D16456A072C9697454FC6D5F58 MD5 FILENAME:corp_rules(2016).docx
BFA54CCC770DCCE8FD4929B7C1176470 MD5 FILENAME:invite.docx
848775BAB0801E5BB15B33FA4FCA573C MD5 FILENAME:Controls Engineer.docx
MD5 FILENAME:corp_rules(2016).docx
MD5 FILENAME:corp_rules(2016).docx
MD5 FILENAME:invite.docx

Happy hunting – bye!