http://www.wired.com/2015/01/german-steel-mill-hack-destruction/
By Kim Zetter
Threat Level
Wired.com
01.08.15
Amid all the noise the Sony hack generated over the holidays, a far more
troubling cyber attack was largely lost in the chaos. Unless you follow
security news closely, you likely missed it.
I’m referring to the revelation, in a German report released just before
Christmas (.pdf), that hackers had struck an unnamed steel mill in
Germany. They did so by manipulating and disrupting control systems to
such a degree that a blast furnace could not be properly shut down,
resulting in “massive”—though unspecified—damage.
This is only the second confirmed case in which a wholly digital attack
caused physical destruction of equipment. The first case, of course, was
Stuxnet, the sophisticated digital weapon the U.S. and Israel launched
against control systems in Iran in late 2007 or early 2008 to sabotage
centrifuges at a uranium enrichment plant. That attack was discovered in
2010, and since then experts have warned that it was only a matter of time
before other destructive attacks would occur. Industrial control systems
have been found to be rife with vulnerabilities, though they manage
critical systems in the electric grid, in water treatment plants and
chemical facilities and even in hospitals and financial networks. A
destructive attack on systems like these could cause even more harm than
at a steel plant.
[...]
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