Tag Archives: Hacking

Hackers halt plant operations in watershed cyber attack

Hackers halt plant operations in watershed cyber attack

By Jim Finkle

(Reuters) – Hackers likely working for a nation-state recently invaded the safety system of a critical infrastructure facility in a watershed attack that halted plant operations, according to cyber investigators and the firm whose software was targeted.

FireEye Inc <FEYE.O> disclosed the incident on Thursday, saying it targeted Triconex industrial safety technology from Schneider Electric SE <SCHN.PA>.

Schneider confirmed that the incident had occurred and that it had issued a security alert to users of Triconex, which cyber experts said is widely used in the energy industry, including at nuclear facilities, and oil and gas plants.

FireEye and Schneider declined to identify the victim, industry or location of the attack. Cyber-security company Dragos said the hackers targeted an organization in the Middle East, while a second firm, CyberX, said it believe the victim was in Saudi Arabia.

It marks the first report of a safety system breach at an industrial plant by hackers, who have in recent years placed increasing attention on breaking into utilities, factories and other types of critical infrastructure, cyber experts said.

Compromising a safety system could let hackers shut them down in advance of attacking other parts of an industrial plant, potentially preventing operators from identifying and halting destructive attacks, they said.

Safety systems “could be fooled to indicate that everything is okay,” even as hackers damage a plant, said Galina Antova, co-founder of cyber-security firm Claroty.

“This is a watershed,” said Sergio Caltagirone, head of threat intelligence with Dragos. “Others will eventually catch up and try to copy this kind of attack.”

In the incident, hackers used sophisticated malware to take remote control of a workstation running a Schneider Electric Triconex safety shutdown system, then sought to reprogram controllers used to identify safety issues. Some controllers entered a fail safe mode, which caused related processes to shut down and caused the plant to identify the attack, FireEye said.

FireEye believes the attacker’s actions inadvertently caused the shutdown while probing the system to learn how it worked, said Dan Scali, who led FireEye’s investigation.

The attackers were likely conducting reconnaissance to learn how they could modify safety systems so they would not operate in the event that the hackers intended to launch an attack that disrupted or damaged the plant, he said.

PUBLIC WARNINGS

The U.S. government and private cyber-security firms have issued public warnings over the past few years about attempts by hackers from nations including Iran, North Korea and Russia and others to attack companies that run critical infrastructure plants in what they say are primarily reconnaissance operations.

CyberX Vice President Phil Neray said his firm found evidence that the malware was deployed in Saudi Arabia, which could suggest that Iran may be behind the attack.

Security researchers widely believe that Iran was responsible for a series of attacks on Saudi Arabian networks in 2012 and 2017 using a virus known as Shamoon.

Schneider provided Reuters with a customer security alert, dated Wednesday, which said it was working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to investigate the attack.

“While evidence suggests this was an isolated incident and not due to a vulnerability in the Triconex system or its program code, we continue to investigate whether there are additional attack vectors,” the alert said.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Scott McConnell said the agency was looking into the matter “to assess the potential impact on critical infrastructure.”

The malware, which FireEye has dubbed Triton, is only the third type of computer virus discovered to date that is capable of disrupting industrial processes.

The first, Stuxnet, was discovered in 2010 and is widely believed by security researchers to have been used by the United States and Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear program.

The second, known as Crash Override or Industroyer, was discovered last year by researchers who said it was likely used in a December 2016 attack that cut power in Ukraine.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Toronto; Editing by Susan Thomas)

UK shipping firm Clarkson reports cyber attack

UK shipping firm Clarkson reports cyber attack

(Reuters) – British shipping services provider Clarkson Plc <CKN.L> on Wednesday said it was the victim of a cyber security hack and warned that the person or persons behind the attack may release some data shortly.

The company’s disclosure, while a relatively rare event in Britain, follows a series of high-profile hacks in corporate America.

Clarkson is one of the world’s main shipbrokers, sourcing vessels for the world’s largest producers and traders of natural resources. It also has a research operation which collects and analyses data on merchant shipping and offshore markets.

The London-headquartered company said it had been working with the police on the incident but did not provide any details about the scale or type of data stolen.

“As soon as it was discovered, Clarksons took immediate steps to respond to and manage the incident,” the company said.

“Our initial investigations have shown the unauthorized access was gained via a single and isolated user account which has now been disabled.”

The company said it is in the process of contacting potentially affected clients and individuals directly, and that it has been working with data security specialists to probe further.

(Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Patrick Graham)

Nepal bank latest victim in heists targeting SWIFT system

Nepal bank latest victim in heists targeting SWIFT system

By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – A bank in Nepal is the latest victim in a string of cyber heists targeting the global SWIFT bank messaging system, though most of the stolen funds have been recovered, two officials involved in the investigation confirmed on Tuesday.

Hackers last month made about $4.4 million in fraudulent transfers from Kathmandu-based NIC Asia Bank to countries including Britain, China, Japan, Singapore and the United States when the bank was closed for annual festival holidays, according to Nepal media reports.

All but $580,000 of the funds were recovered after Nepal asked other nations to block release of the stolen money, Chinta Mani Shivakoti, deputy governor of the Central Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB), told Reuters.

Brussels-based SWIFT said last month that security controls instituted after last year’s $81 million theft from Bangladesh’s central bank helped thwart some recent hacking attempts, but it warned that cyber criminals continue to target SWIFT customers.

SWIFT or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication is a co-operative owned by its user banks. It declined to comment on the NIC Asia Bank hack, saying it does not discuss specific users.

Representatives with NIC Asia Bank, one of dozens of private banks in Nepal, were not available for comment.

The chief of Nepal’s Central Investigation Bureau, Pushkar Karki, confirmed to Reuters that his agency was investigating the theft.

KPMG is also involved in the investigation, according to Nepali media reports. KPMG representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

The central bank intends to release guidelines on how to thwart such incidents after investigations are completed, according to Shivakoti.

“The incident showed there are some weaknesses with the IT department of the bank,” Shivakoti said.

SWIFT said in a statement on Tuesday that it offers assistance to banks when it learns of potential fraud cases, then shares relevant information with other clients on an anonymous basis.

“This preserves confidentiality, whilst assisting other SWIFT users to take appropriate measures to protect themselves,” it said.

“We have no indication that our network and core messaging services have been compromised,” SWIFT added.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma, additional reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore and Jim Finkle in Toronto; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Matthew Lewis)

Global Banks fearing North Korea hacking, prepare defenses

Binary code is seen on a screen against a North Korean flag in this illustration photo November 1, 2017.

By Jim Finkle and Alastair Sharp

WASHINGTON/TORONTO (Reuters) – Global banks are preparing to defend themselves against North Korea potentially intensifying a years-long hacking spree by seeking to cripple financial networks as Pyongyang weighs the threat of U.S. military action over its nuclear program, cyber security experts said.

North Korean hackers have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from banks during the past three years, including a heist in 2016 at Bangladesh Bank that yielded $81 million, according to Dmitri Alperovitch, chief technology officer at cyber security firm CrowdStrike.

Alperovitch told the Reuters Cyber Security Summit on Tuesday that banks were concerned Pyongyang’s hackers may become more destructive by using the same type of “wiper” viruses they deployed across South Korea and at Sony Corp’s &lt;6758.T&gt; Hollywood studio.

The North Korean government has repeatedly denied accusations by security researchers and the U.S. government that it has carried out cyber attacks.

North Korean hackers could leverage knowledge about financial networks gathered during cyber heists to disrupt bank operations, according to Alperovitch, who said his firm has conducted “war game” exercises for several banks.

“The difference between theft and destruction is often a few keystrokes,” Alperovitch said.

Security teams at major U.S. banks have shared information on the North Korean cyber threat in recent months, said a second cyber security expert familiar with those talks.

“We know they attacked South Korean banks,” said the source, who added that fears have grown that banks in the United States will be targeted next.

Tensions between Washington and Pyongyang have been building after a series of nuclear and missile tests by North Korea and bellicose verbal exchanges between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

John Carlin, a former U.S. assistant attorney general, told the Reuters summit that other firms, among them defense contractors, retailers and social media companies, were also concerned.

“They are thinking ‘Are we going to see an escalation in attacks from North Korea?'” said Carlin, chair of Morrison &amp; Foerster international law firm’s global risk and crisis management team.

Jim Lewis, a cyber expert with Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it is unlikely that North Korea would launch destructive attacks on American banks because of concerns about U.S. retaliation.

Representatives of the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the top U.S. banking regulators, declined to comment. Both have ramped up cyber security oversight in recent years.

 

 

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Washington and Alastair Sharp in Toronto; additional reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington; editing by Grant McCool)

 

Kaspersky says it obtained suspected NSA hacking code from U.S. computer

Kaspersky says it obtained suspected NSA hacking code from U.S. computer

By Joseph Menn

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab on Wednesday acknowledged that its security software had taken source code for a secret American hacking tool from a personal computer in the United States.

The admission came in a statement from the embattled company that described preliminary results from an internal inquiry it launched into media reports that the Russian government used Kaspersky anti-virus software to collect National Security Agency technology.

While the explanation is considered plausible by some security experts, U.S. officials who have been campaigning against using Kaspersky software on sensitive computers are likely to seize on the admission that the company took secret code that was not endangering its customer to justify a ban.

Fears about Kaspersky’s ties to Russian intelligence, and the capacity of its anti-virus software to sniff out and remove files, prompted an escalating series of warnings and actions from U.S. authorities over the past year. They culminated in the Department of Homeland Security last month barring government agencies from using Kaspersky products.

In a statement, the company said it stumbled on the code a year earlier than the recent newspaper reports had it, in 2014. It said logs showed that the consumer version of Kaspersky’s popular product had been analyzing questionable software from a U.S. computer and found a zip file that was flagged as malicious.

While reviewing the file’s contents, an analyst discovered it contained the source code for a hacking tool later attributed to what Kaspersky calls the Equation Group. The analyst reported the matter to Chief Executive Eugene Kaspersky, who ordered that the company’s copy of the code be destroyed, the company said.

“Following a request from the CEO, the archive was deleted from all our systems,” the company said. It said no third parties saw the code, though the media reports had said the spy tool had ended up in Russian government hands.

The Wall Street Journal said on Oct. 5 that hackers working for the Russian government appeared to have targeted the NSA worker by using Kaspersky software to identify classified files. The New York Times reported on Oct. 10 that Israeli officials reported the operation to the United States after they hacked into Kaspersky’s network.

Kaspersky did not say whether the computer belonged to an NSA worker who improperly took home secret files, which is what U.S. officials say happened. Kaspersky denied the Journal’s report that its programs searched for keywords including “top secret.”

The company said it found no evidence that it had been hacked by Russian spies or anyone except the Israelis, though it suggested others could have obtained the tools by hacking into the American’s computer through a back door it later spotted there.

The new 2014 date of the incident is intriguing, because Kaspersky only announced its discovery of an espionage campaign by the Equation Group in February 2015. At that time, Reuters cited former NSA employees who said that Equation Group was an NSA project.

Kaspersky’s Equation Group report was one of its most celebrated findings, since it indicated that the group could infect firmware on most computers. That gave the NSA almost undetectable presence.

Kaspersky later responded via email to a question by Reuters to confirm that the company had first discovered the so-called Equation Group programs in the spring of 2014.

It also did not say how often it takes uninfected, non-executable files, which normally would pose no threat, from users’ computers.

Former employees told Reuters in July that the company used that technique to help identify suspected hackers. A Kaspersky spokeswoman at the time did not explicitly deny the claim but complained generally about “false allegations.”

After that, the stories emerged suggesting that Kaspersky was a witting or unwitting partner in espionage against the United States.

Kaspersky’s consumer anti-virus software has won high marks from reviewers.

It said Monday that it would submit the source code of its software and future updates for inspection by independent parties.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Editing by Jim Finkle and Eric Auchard)

U.S. warns public about attacks on energy, industrial firms

U.S. warns public about attacks on energy, industrial firms

By Jim Finkle

(Reuters) – The U.S government issued a rare public warning about hacking campaigns targeting energy and industrial firms, the latest evidence that cyber attacks present an increasing threat to the power industry and other public infrastructure.

The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation warned in a report distributed via email late on Friday that the nuclear, energy, aviation, water and critical manufacturing industries have been targeted along with government entities in attacks dating back to at least May.

The agencies warned that hackers had succeeded in compromising some targeted networks, but did not identify specific victims or describe any cases of sabotage.

The objective of the attackers is to compromise organizational networks with malicious emails and tainted websites to obtain credentials for accessing computer networks of their targets, the report said.

U.S. authorities have been monitoring the activity for months, which they initially detailed in a confidential June report first reported by Reuters. That document, which was privately distributed to firms at risk of attacks, described a narrower set of activity focusing on the nuclear, energy and critical manufacturing sectors.

Homeland Security and FBI representatives could not be reached for comment on Saturday morning.

Robert Lee, an expert in securing industrial networks, said the report describes activities from two or three groups that have stolen user credentials and spied on organizations in the United States and other nations, but not launched destructive attacks.

“This is very aggressive activity,” said Lee, chief executive of cyber-security firm Dragos.

He said the report appears to describe groups working in the interests of the Russian government, though he declined to elaborate.  Dragos is also monitoring other groups targeting infrastructure that appear to be aligned with China, Iran, North Korea, he said.

The hacking described in the government report is unlikely to result in dramatic attacks in the near term, Lee said, but he added that it is still troubling: “We don’t want our adversaries learning enough to be able to do things that are disruptive later.”

The report said that hackers have succeeded in infiltrating some targets, including at least one energy generator, and conducting reconnaissance on their networks. It was accompanied by six technical documents describing malware used in the attacks.

Homeland Security “has confidence that this campaign is still ongoing and threat actors are actively pursuing their objectives over a long-term campaign,” the report said.

Government agencies and energy firms previously declined to identify any of the victims in the attacks described in June’s confidential report.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Toronto; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Merck cyber attack may cost insurers $275 million: Verisk’s PCS

Merck cyber attack may cost insurers $275 million: Verisk's PCS

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Insurers could pay $275 million to cover the insured portion of drugmaker Merck & Co’s loss from a cyber attack in June, according to a forecast by Verisk Analytics Inc’s Property Claim Services (PCS) unit.

Merck, however, has not disclosed the magnitude of its uninsured losses from the “NotPetya” attack, which disrupted production of some Merck medicines and vaccines.

The company was among dozens of firms worldwide hit in the June 27 attack, which began in Ukraine, then rapidly spread through corporate networks of multinationals with operations or suppliers in Eastern Europe.

“Merck has not yet fully quantified its losses, much less given any of its insurers an estimate of the total amount of those losses,” Merck spokeswoman Claire Gillespie said in a statement.

She reiterated that Merck has insurance that would cover some costs, but declined to elaborate or say how much Merck expects to have to pay on its own.

The drugmaker said in July that it had suffered a worldwide disruption of its operations as a result of the malware. It was still in the process of restoring its manufacturing operations a month later.

Merck said then that it was confident it would be able to maintain a continuous supply of its top-selling and life-saving drugs, but warned of temporary delays in delivering some other products.

NotPetya is a destructive virus that spread quickly across computer networks, crippling computers by encrypting hard drives so that machines cannot run. The attacks caused massive disruptions to industrial networks that rely on computers because businesses must individually replace damaged drives, a labor-intensive process.

Cyber insurance can be expensive to buy and is not widely used outside the United States, with one insurer previously describing the cost as $100,000 for $10 million in data breach insurance.

Policies typically cover expenses stemming from a data breach, such as forensics and data restoration, among other costs. Coverage also helps pay for business interruption expenses when a breach or malware attack shuts down a company’s website.

Some companies without cyber insurance have used their policies covering kidnap, ransom and extortion to recoup losses caused by ransomware viruses.

PCS provides estimates on a wide variety of insured losses, ranging from damages caused by hacks to hurricanes and wildfires.

(Reporting by Michael Erman in New York and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; editing by Jim Finkle and G Crosse)

Researchers uncover flaw that makes Wi-Fi vulnerable to hacks

FILE PHOTO: A magnifying glass is held in front of a computer screen in this picture illustration taken in Berlin May 21, 2013. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski

(Reuters) – Cyber security watchdogs and researchers are issuing warnings over risks associated with a widely used system for securing Wi-Fi communications after the discovery of a flaw that could allow hackers to read information thought to be encrypted, or infect websites with malware.

An alert from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Computer Emergency Response Team on Monday said the flaw could be used within range of Wi-Fi using the WPA2 protocol to hijack private communications. It recommended installing vendor updates on affected products, such as routers provided by Cisco Systems Inc <CSCO.O> or Juniper Networks Inc <JNPR.N>.

Belgian researchers Mathy Vanhoef and Frank Piessens of Belgian university KU Leuven disclosed the bug in WPA2, which secures modern Wi-Fi systems used by vendors for wireless communications between mobile phones, laptops and other connected devices with Internet-connected routers or hot spots.

“If your device supports Wi-Fi, it is most likely affected,” they said on the www.krackattacks.com website, which they set up to provide technical information about the flaw and methods hackers might use to attack vulnerable devices.

It was not immediately clear how difficult it would be for hackers to exploit the bug, or if the vulnerability has previously been used to launch any attacks.

Finnish security firm F-Secure said experts have long been cautious about Wi-Fi’s ability to withstand security challenges of the 21st century.

“But the worst part of it is that it’s an issue with Wi-Fi protocols, which means it affects practically every single person in the world that uses Wi-Fi networks,” it said on its website.

Microsoft Corp <MSFT.O> said it had released a security update for Windows. Customers who applied the update, or had automatic updates enabled, would already be protected, it said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

CERT New Zealand and CERT India asked users to apply security updates. CERT NZ suggested using ethernet cables and to connect directly into the network, when possible.

“Given the complexity of updating smart devices such as mobile phones, CERT NZ also strongly recommends disabling Wi-Fi when it isn’t required,” it said in its advisory. (http://bit.ly/2gfho2b)

The Wi-Fi Alliance, an industry group that represents hundreds of Wi-Fi technology companies, said the issue “could be resolved through a straightforward software update”.

The group said in a statement it had advised members to release patches quickly and recommended that consumers quickly install those security updates.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Toronto and Dustin Volz in Washington; Additional reporting by Aradhana Aravindan in Singapore; Editing by Susan Thomas, Dan Grebler and Jacqueline Wong)

SWIFT says hackers still targeting bank messaging system

FILE PHOTO : The Swift bank logo is pictured in this photo illustration taken April 26, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

By Jim Finkle

TORONTO (Reuters) – Hackers continue to target the SWIFT bank messaging system, though security controls instituted after last year’s $81 million heist at Bangladesh’s central bank have helped thwart many of those attempts, a senior SWIFT official told Reuters.

“Attempts continue,” said Stephen Gilderdale, head of SWIFT’s Customer Security Programme, in a phone interview. “That is what we expected. We didn’t expect the adversaries to suddenly disappear.”

The disclosure underscores that banks remain at risk of cyber attacks targeting computers used to access SWIFT almost two years after the February 2016 theft from a Bangladesh Bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Gilderdale declined to say how many hacks had been attempted this year, what percentage were successful, how much money had been stolen or whether they were growing or slowing down.

On Monday, two people were arrested in Sri Lanka for suspected money laundering from a Taiwanese bank whose computer system was hacked to enable illicit transactions abroad. Police acted after the state-owned Bank of Ceylon reported a suspicious transfer.

SWIFT, a Belgium-based co-operative owned by its user banks, has declined comment on the case, saying it does not discuss individual entities.

Gilderdale said that some security measures instituted in the wake of the Bangladesh Bank heist had thwarted attempts.

As an example, he said that SWIFT had stopped some heists thanks to an update to its software that automatically sends alerts when hackers tamper with data on bank computers used to access the messaging network.

SWIFT shares technical information about cyber attacks and other details on how hackers target banks on a private portal open to its members.

Gilderdale was speaking ahead of the organization’s annual Sibos global user conference, which starts on Monday in Toronto.

At the conference, SWIFT will release details of a plan to start offering security data in “machine digestible” formats that banks can use to automate efforts to discover and remediate cyber attacks, he said.

SWIFT will also unveil plans to start sharing that data with outside security vendors so they can incorporate the information into their products, he said.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

Equifax takes down web page after reports of new hack

The logo and trading information for Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. are displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

By John McCrank

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Equifax Inc said on Thursday it has taken one of its customer help web pages offline as its security team looks into reports of another potential cyber breach at the credit reporting company, which recently disclosed a hack that compromised the sensitive information of 145.5 million people.

The move came after an independent security analyst on Wednesday found part of Equifax’s website was under the control of attackers trying to trick visitors into installing fraudulent Adobe Flash updates that could infect computers with malware, the technology news website Ars Technica reported.

“We are aware of the situation identified on the equifax.com website in the credit report assistance link,” Equifax spokesman Wyatt Jefferies said in an email. “Our IT and security teams are looking into this matter, and out of an abundance of caution have temporarily taken this page offline.”

The Atlanta-based company, which has faced seething criticism from consumers, regulators and lawmakers over its handling of the earlier breach, said it would provide more information as it becomes available.

Equifax disclosed on Sept. 7 that its systems had been breached between mid-May and late July. In the fallout, the company has parted ways with its chief executive, chief information officer and chief security officer.

The breach has prompted investigations by multiple federal and state agencies, including a criminal probe by the U.S. Department of Justice.

As a credit reporting agency, Equifax keeps vast amounts of consumer data for banks and other creditors to use to determine the chances of their customers’ defaulting.

(Reporting by John McCrank; Editing by Bill Rigby)