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Cyber terror for Mega Industries

By Sathram Shiva Kumar

What is SCADA

The task of supervision of machinery and industrial processes on a routine basis can be an
excruciatingly tiresome job. Always being by the side a machine or being on a 24x7 patrol
duty around the assembly line equipment checking the temperature levels, water levels, oil
level and performing other checks would be considered a wastage of the expertise of the
technician on trivial tasks. But, to get rid of this burdensome task, the engineers devised
equipment and sensors that would prevent or at least reduce the frequency of these routine
checks. As a result of that, control systems and it’s various off springs like SCADA systems
were formed. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) offers the ease of
monitoring of sensors placed at distances, from one central location.

Hacking into SCADA

“Hey you I paid my bills please patch my electric plant system” these are rights we have to
demand in coming days! The ICS (Industrial control system) are need to be patched not too
far our dams may be opened and nuclear plant may be down by a cyber-attack!! Yes it
started around the globe and may never stops. SCADA (supervisory control and data
acquisition) are used to monitor and control a plant or equipment in industries such as
energy, water, power transportation, and many more I define SCADA is HEART to any ICS.

The Syrian cyber group called SEA (Syrian Electronic Army) announced an attack in may
2013 against a strategic Israel infrastructure systems in Haifa led to reveal that attackers
targeted the irrigation control system of kibbutz Sa’ar near Nahariya in 2012and a Iranian
hacker group parastoo attacked in a military style on California PG&E Metcalf and also
International Atomic Energy Agency in 2012 plus the worlds dangerous terror group jihad
group named Yaman Mukhaddab’s Electronic jihad group has already 100 volunteers since
started from June 2011 these are only few incidents that many terror groups and private
security firms will be involved in coming future and the government and industry owners
have to take SCADA security a serious way if not owners must convince their wife’s i mean
we all have a serious threat from other countries and by stats US is a major target for many
countries and SCADA must be coded with a deep security measures and a antivirus for
SCADA is much better which Kaspersky has already started developing it most of SCADA
are using windows 95 and xp because a they made the purchased 25 years ago and it must
patched definitely and they are thousands of industries which a are primary target with this
configuration and a security researcher from IOActive could compromised a industrial facility
which is 40miles away from 40$ (Dollar) and Chinese has gone through US water plants and
they are script kiddies who can hack into chemical industry which may cause serious
environment damage.

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