SCADA: What the next Stuxnet will look like and how to prevent it

August 10, 2019 12:30 PM

In 2019, almost a decade after the famed Stuxnet worm silently wreaked havoc on an Iranian uranium enrichment plant, SCADA vendors still have gaping holes in their PLC and HMI development environments. Our new research into 4 different PLC vendor software systems details an almost negligent lack of security standards in modern SCADA environments. This lack of security creates great opportunity for future attackers and the next high-profile attack on industrial control systems. The attack scenario cannot be understated as critical systems such as power, water, transportation, and manufacturing all rely on major PLC vendors in one way or another . We will show a theoretical attack that could have happened using recently discovered vulnerabilities and proof of concept code to disrupt a major power industrial system. We share our observations on vulnerabilities found in vendors across the board and mitigation techniques for using these required software in highly critical environments where even air-gapping is not enough to remove the threat of a remote attacker.

Speaker Information

Panelist Information

Joseph Bingham

Tenable

Before joining Tenable in 2014, Joseph worked at Symantec doing malware reverse engineering. Since joining Tenable as a reverse engineer, Joseph has developed low-level protocol functionality for Nessus, analyzed different classes of remote code execution vulnerabilities, and written many remote exploitation plugins. He has presented at VirusBulletin and BSides and has produced several publications on malware, exploitation, and reverse engineering.