Hacking Wireless Ghosts Vulnerable For Years
Is the risk associated to a Remote Code Execution vulnerability in an industrial plant the same when it affects the human life? When calculating risk, certain variables and metrics are combined into equations that are rendered as static numbers, so that risk remediation efforts can be prioritized. But such calculations sometimes ignore the environmental metrics and rely exclusively on exploitability and impact. The practice of scoring vulnerabilities without auditing the potential for collateral damage could underestimate a cyber attack that affects human safety in an industrial plant and leads to…
Practical and cheap cyberwar (cyber-warfare): Part I
Every day we hear about a new vulnerability or a new attack technique, but most of the time it’s difficult to imagine the real impact. The current emphasis on cyberwar (cyber-warfare if you prefer) leads to myths and nonsense being discussed. I wanted to show real life examples of large scale attacks with big impacts on critical infrastructure, people, companies, etc. The idea of this post is to raise awareness. I want to show how vulnerable some industrial, oil, and gas installations currently are and how easy it is…
“Broken Hearts”: How plausible was the Homeland pacemaker hack?
[1] I watched the TV show Homeland for the first time a few months ago. This particular episode had a plot twist that involved a terrorist remotely hacking into the pacemaker of the Vice President of the United States. People follow this show religiously, and there were articles questioning the plausibility of the pacemaker hack. Physicians were questioned as to the validity of the hack and were quoted saying that this is not possible in the real world [2]. In my professional opinion, the episode…
