Secure Operations Technology

I am pleased to announce the general availability of my new book, Secure Operations Technology (SEC-OT). SEC-OT is a perspective, a methodology and a set of best practices that document what thoroughly-secured industrial sites actually do. What these sites do differs sharply from what most industrial sites do.

Most industrial sites practice IT Security (IT-SEC) whose focus is to “protect the information” – the CIA, the AIC, the IAC, or the something of the information. The focus at secure industrial sites though, is protecting the safe, reliable, continuous and correct operation of the physical, industrial process, not protecting information. Indeed, secure sites are focused on precisely the opposite – protecting correct and continuous physical operations from information, more specifically from cyber attacks that may be embedded in information.

Defining Control Security

This post first appeared on the Waterfall Security Solutions Blog July, 2018

“The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.” – Socrates (470 – 399 B.C.)
Definitions are important – good ones shape our understanding of concepts while poor ones impair that understanding. Consider the definition:

pen: a tube of ink with a tiny ball bearing at the tip
How useful is that definition? If we give the definition to a non-English-speaker, would it seem like a word worth remembering? Consider a different definition:

Total Meltdown

The Meltdown / Spectre saga continues. Ulf Frisk just posted a description of a vulnerability he has coined “Total Meltdown”. It seems that Microsoft developers introduced an even worse vulnerability while fixing the Meltdown vulnerability in Windows 7 and Windows 2008 Server R2. With this broken Meltdown “fix” installed, any program can read or write any word in any other program’s memory, or the kernel’s memory for that matter, just by reaching out and touching – no special tricks required. The cure is worse than the disease.

Protecting Industrial Control Systems from Spectre and Meltdown

The big news today is the Spectre and Meltdown bugs. These vulnerabilities let attack code such as Javascript steal passwords, encryption keys and session cookies from kernel memory and/or browser windows on nearly all modern computers. The performance hits and code changes needed to fix these bugs are extensive. A LOT of costly testing will be needed in the very short term before fixes for Meltdown and Spectre can safely be applied to our ICS/OT/SCADA networks. The only bright spot in this situation is that as usual, Waterfall customers are taking these developments in stride. Properly-designed ICS security programs make it practically impossible for any attack code to reach vulnerable systems. Outside of this community, Spectre and Meltdown will be a major problem.

Control Is Not Data

(First published in the DHS ICSJWG Dec/2016 Newsletter as Control Is Not Data.)

IT gurus tell us that control system security is essentially the same as IT security, and that both are about "protecting the data." The gurus tell us that, yes, there are two kinds of "data" in control systems - monitoring data and control data - but "data is data." They tell us that all we need to do is protect the CIA, or AIC, or IAC, or something, of the data and we're done - we're secure.

They are wrong.

SCADA Security Site Launched

www.scada-security.ca is live. The site is focused on approaches to modern SCADA Security education. One of the things I'm doing at Waterfall Security Solutions, is working with a couple of different universities to add SCADA security content to their undergraduate and graduate programs. As those efforts bear fruit, I will be posting pointers here to different sorts of course content.

SCADA Security Published

My book SCADA Security - What's broken and how to fix it is live on Amazon in soft-cover and Kindle formats. The book's launch was the Waterfall/TDi mingle at the ICSJWG last month, with copies available for all ICSJWG attendees complements of Waterfall Security Solutions.

Protecting Critical Infrastructure Published

Cyber-Physical Security - Protecting Critical Infrastructure at the State and Local Level was published recently. I contributed chapter 4 "Cyber Perimeters for Critical Infrastructures." Essential to modern thinking about control system network perimeters is the concept of "trust," "criticality," or "impact" - different authors use different words for the concept.

100,000 Vulnerabilities

(This article was originally published on the Digital Bond blog.) The popular press cites an “alarming” statistic from time to time – the “dramatic” increase in cyber-security vulnerabilities being reported in industrial control system components. 129 were reported in 2011, vs only 15 in 2010 and 14 in 2009. Those of us in the industry of course groan when we read nonsense like this. We know the truth to be rather more “dramatic.” How bad is SCADA security really? Let’s do the math.

ICS and SCADA Security Myth: Protection by Firewalls

(This article was originally published in the June, 2012 ICSJWG Quarterly Newsletter.) In this article I am going to talk about a fairy tale. This tale doesn’t have princes or frogs in it, but instead it deals with SCADA and industrial control system security. The existence of a “firewall” between control system networks and the rest of the world has been one of the most enduring fairy tales in the field of SCADA/ICS security. The idea is that, in a properly designed system, there is a logical barrier between the control network and the business network. Since unauthorized information cannot cross such a firewall, bad things like hackers and worms can never get into critical control systems. From this, a corollary flows:

Project Basecamp: Tempest in a Teapot

I have been thinking about the DHS ICSJWG Spring Conference of a week ago, and the 2-hour debate at the conference on device security and the Digital Bond "Project Basecamp" project that was announced at January's S4 conference. The debate showed there is still resistance to device authentication, but among end users more so than among vendors. I think Jonathan Pollet's comments about this debate echoing the 1990's IT encryption debate are on the mark. That said though, I still think it will take a long time before device authentication becomes commonplace.

Air Gaps Dead, Network Isolation Making a Comeback

(This article was originally published on the Digital Bond blog.) Eric Byres recent post claiming the #1 ICS and SCADA Security Myth is protection by air gaps struck a cord with me. I have been thoroughly distracted of late with my new role at Waterfall Security Solutions but even so I could not let this one go by. Old-school air gaps are still used occasionally, in the most sensitive control systems. The rest of the time, technologies like data diodes or unidirectional gateways provide the the most important benefits of truly air gapped control systems, while still permitting businesses to profit from access to the real-time data produced by their control systems.

Security Basics: Social Engineering

(This article was originally published on the Findings From the Field blog.) Miles McQueen of the University of Idaho & Idaho National Laboratories had an interesting presentation in the Security track at the last ARC World Forum in Orlando some time ago. He talked about work INL had done with their own people to increase awareness of social engineering attacks. He cited pan-cultural research results about people lying as background. The research showed how many people across many cultures believed that the following traits indicated someone was lying:

CIP-002-4 “Bright Line” Secures 163 Plants, Max

(This article was originally published on the Findings From the Field blog.) In the 2009 statistics, the latest available, NERC tracked some 10,500 generators with a nameplate capacity of 0.1 MW or higher, at about 5700 sites. The new NERC CIP-002 version 4 "bright line" rule says NERC-CIP applies to only those generating sites with "an aggregate highest rated net Real Power capability of the preceding 12 months equal to or exceeding 1500 MW in a single Interconnection." How many locations/plants is that? According to NERC, only 163 sites have a nameplate generating capability of 1500 MW or greater, and there is no word yet on how many of those plants are exempt because they feed less than 1500 MW into any one interconnection.

Vulnerabilities Not News to Experts

(This article was originally published on the Findings From the Field blog.) Last week's announcement by Luigi Auriemma of 35 unpatched ICS vulnerabilities is no surprise to SCADA/ICS experts. If anything, the surprise in the list of vulnerabilities is that all of them were implementation flaws rather than the more serious design flaws evident in many products. Most industrial sites maintain that their hardened perimeters are doing a good job of protecting the "soft interior" of their control systems. They are mistaken. There are enormous numbers of unpatched security vulnerabilities in control system software - most undiscovered and un-announced. Thus far few people are looking for ICS vulnerabilities - there is little profit in finding them. Many who find vulnerabilities use the Coordinated Disclosure process, but there is a large population of skillful investigators who believe strongly in Full Disclosure. Expect a steady dribble of these vulnerability announcements - indefinitely.

Inside-Out Pen-Testing Still Rare

(This article was originally published on the Findings From the Field blog.) Industrial Defender's penetration testers report that they see "inside-out" penetration testing engagements only rarely. In such engagements, the tester starts from some point on the operations network and attempts to compromise equipment on the enterprise network. More conventional "outside-in" attacks do represent a greater risk to most enterprises, but "inside-out" tests really should be carried out more frequently than they are now.

Advanced Threats and Smart Grid Standards

(This article was originally published on the Findings From the Field blog.) At the recent Smart Grid Security East conference, I had opportunity to ask two standards gurus about advanced threats and existing security standards. I asked if they felt the evidence to date of advanced threats to control systems warranted changes in security standards. The answer was a qualified "no" from both...

Smart Grid Safety vs Confidentiality

(This article was originally published on the Findings From the Field blog.) I just returned from Smart Grid Security East. The event featured an impressive set of high-powered government and regulatory speakers and a fair number of vendors as well. Surprisingly, I found the "NERC-CIP Compliance" workshop very useful -- in addition to the usual introductory information, there was insightful discussion between a number of security consultants and former NERC auditors as to how this word or that phrase are being interpreted during audits. The event also crystallized for me an understanding of why I have found the AMI/smart meter security space so confusing for the last little while: IT folks see smart meters as billing appliances. ICS folks, like me, see them as control devices. Security requirements for the two classes of devices are very different. Thus far, the IT interpretation is winning...

Symantec Dossier Updated: v1.4

(This article was originally published on the Findings From the Field blog.) A week ago, Symantec released the third update to their Stuxnet Dossier, adding sections on chains of infection and on the 417 PLC exploits. The new information is interesting because it suggests new things about the target site and how it was initially infected. Ralph Langner's team has also investigated the S7-417 code and disagrees with Symantec in a number of ways.

How Stuxnet Spreads

Eric Byres, Joel Langill and I have just released a new whitepaper: How Stuxnet Spreads - A Study of Infection Paths in Best Practice Systems. The paper details how the worm moves through what appear to be well-protected enterprise, plant and control system networks and firewalls on the way to its objective - the PLCs controlling the physical process. Existing best-practice security measures are shown to be insufficient to the task of deflecting attacks as sophisticated as this one.