CIA Confirms Cyber Attack Caused Multi-City Power Outage

In the movie “Live Free or Die Hard,” street-wise cop John McClain battles it out with the bad guys using computers to carry out their crimes. In this movie, we are introduced to a term called a “Fire Sale” where hackers take out critical systems to cause chaos. It is literally a movie plot terror threat, and seems pretty unlikely to happen outside of the theaters.

But late last week we got news of a similar scenario being carried out in foreign countries. Cyber criminals extorting public utilities with threats of taking down the facility. It seems that in at least one case, the attackers made good on their threats, affecting multiple cities. The Daily Mail of London indicates that these attacks have been carried out as near as “Central and South American countries including Mexico.”

Given what I know about SCADA systems from reading public documents and making some guesses based on my experiences, I’d say it’s entirely plausible that unauthorized access could be gained to these systems. While the speech mentions utilities outside the US, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are unauthorized users inside some American public utility companies. And we know that SCADA systems have been compromised before. Both with and without “insider information.” Just recently, a 15 year old kid was able to take control of city trams in Lodz, Poland with an IR remote control and caused one car to jump the tracks and hit another tram.