Cyberattack on German Steel Mill Inflicts Serious Damage
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Unknown hackers inflicted ‘serious damage’ to a German steel mill this year by breaking into internal networks and accessing the main controls of the factory, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) revealed in its annual report.
The report said the intrusion into the mainframe system caused significant damage to a blast furnace as the attackers managed to manipulate the internal systems and industrial components, causing outages that disrupted the controlled manner of operation.
The BSI’s didn’t mention which plant was targeted nor gave any reference to the time of the attack. The Office did note the “very advanced” capabilities of the hackers.
To penetrate the security, the intruders used a “sophisticated spear phishing” method to gain access to the core networks of the plant. Using this method, which involves targeting specific individuals within an organization, the attackers first penetrated the office network of the factory. From there, they managed their way into the production networks, RT reported.
Benjamin Sonntag, a software developer and digital rights activist told RT that cyber war has been going on for a long time. And while it is nothing new, Sonntag says, the “biggest problem” at the moment is the work of the NSA, “which handle both the defensive approach which is enhancing security of the infrastructure and the offensive approach which is attacking others with mass surveillance.”
The steel mill incident, Sonntag says, reminds him of the most famous attack on industrial control systems – Stuxnet. The trojan attack, which was first uncovered in June 2010 was allegedly used by the US and Israel to penetrate a number of Iranian facilities, most notably the Natanz uranium enrichment plant.
