Just weeks afterMI5 warned banks and utility ownersthat hackers are targeting systems that controlcritical
national infrastructure, theCIAhas
issued a similar warning to US operators.
CIA senior analyst Tom Donahue told an international
Sans
Institute
process control security conference last week that the agency
had evidence from outside the US that hackers were blackmailing
victims.
"We have information, from multiple regions outside the US, of
cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands," he
told 300 officials, engineers and security managers from electric,
water, oil & gas and other critical industry operators from the
US, UK, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
"We suspect, but cannot confirm, that some of these attackers
had the benefit of inside knowledge," he said. "We have information
that cyber attacks have been used to disrupt power equipment in
several regions outside the US. In at least one case, the
disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities. We do
not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved
intrusions through the internet."
In December the UK's Centre
for the Protection of National Infrastructure wrote to 300 UK
firms warning of hack attacks by "Chinese state organisations".
The UK and US authorities have developed checklists for any firm
that believes it might be a target. For more information on the
US's SCADA and Control Systems Survival Kit e-mail scada@sans.org.
The CPNI's
advice
was updated last week.