Iran cyber actors disrupting US water, energy facilities, FBI warns

Iranian-affiliated actors have escalated intrusions targeting critical US water and energy facilities, in some cases disrupting operations, the FBI and American cyber defense agencies said on Tuesday. The US government alert comes as the war lted by the US and Israel enters its sixth week, with President Donald Trump …

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

I assume

That a major part of our $1.5Tn security budget has been invested in cyber-security of vital resources under the leadership of the most skilled security professionals that the country that invented the internet can muster ?

[Paul Crawford]

Re: I assume

You forgot the icon =>

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

WIth the Israeli ordered and US-executed mass-murder of Palestinians, Iranians, Lebanese, etc. going on, I'm rooting for both the US and Israel to leave this "war" with their noses bloody and their "leaders" before the Hague for war crimes.

And may they meet the exact same fate as Hitler: dead by gunshot.

Whether their own or someone else', I care not. Trump, Nuterenyahu, and Putin are absolute butchers compared to Xi or even the leadership of North Korea. They deserve the absolute worst any ICC can through at them. "Veto" be damned.

[Furious Reg reader John]

Wow, such a fanboi of the misogynistic, homophobic, islamic supremacist, genocidal, human shield wielding Islamic Republic of Iran and it's equally misogynistic, homophobic, islamic supremacist, genocidal, human shield wielding proxies.

It must be awful for you being a Canadian at the moment, but at least the country is on the slow path to being an Islamic republic. I guess it will just be a race between that and the return of the Mahdi.

[Anonymous Coward]

OP didn't do themselves any favours by minimising the actions perpetrated by the likes of Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un.

But let's be honest here- while the current Iranian regime may well be "misogynistic, homophobic, islamic supremacist, genocidal, human shield wielding", you don't actually care about that any more than Trump "cared" about the Iranian civilians he professed to be helping one minute, and then threatened to annihilate the next for the behaviour of the government that was oppressing them.

What people like you *do* care about is being able to use that and your feigned, self-righteous outrage about it it as an attack dog against anyone critical of the US under Trump and Israel under Netanyahu. When it comes to apologists like yourself for those regimes, the strategy is very much that attack is the best form of defence, isn't it?

You never wanted OP to pre-emptively acknowledge those evils of the Iranian regime in the first place. You wanted him *not* to, purely so you could use them against him. Not because you give a damn about any of it.

I've said before that the problem with ISIS isn't just that they're unequivocally and outright evil, it's that they gave the likes of Bashar al-Assad an excuse to paint himself as the good guy- or at least, lesser evil- because he was fighting against them, and to smear *anyone* opposing him as if they were associated with ISIS.

Much the same tactic as people like you exploit in cases like this where none of the sides are "good", where my enemy's enemy is that and nothing more, but where you would like to pretend otherwise.

Regardless, the giveaway red flag for where you're coming from is this...

"It must be awful for you being a Canadian at the moment, but at least the country is on the slow path to being an Islamic republic."

...a snide jibe with the same smug tone as right-wing US Trumpist propaganda, mirroring the usual right-wing lies that various Western countries that Americans know little about are becoming Islamic dominated no-go areas.

[Irongut]

As opposed to the USA and your misogynistic, homophobic, Christian* supremacist, genocidal, multiple bankrupt, pussy grabbing rapist and probable pedophile president?

* Trump and the GOP claim to be Christian but as someone who went to a school run by monks I can confidently say their words and deeds are not Christian.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Kill them all, God will know his own.

How much more christian can you get?

[Anonymous Coward]

Succeeded in distracting from the Epstein Files anyway, didn't it...

probable pedophile president?

You mean the president who- there's a very high chance- decided to launch a war with no overtly clear motive (*) at this specific point in time purely to distract from the Epstein files and- to be fair- largely succeeded in that?

Just a small selection of numerous failed predictions Trump made back in the day that Barack Obama would attack Iran to save himself:-

• "In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran." - Trump Tweet, 7:48 pm · 29 Nov 2011
• "I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!" - Trump Tweet, 2:23 PM - 16 Sep 2013
• "Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!" - Trump Tweet, 6:55 PM - 10 Nov 2013

I've always been pretty sceptical about (rather too easily thrown about) accusations of "projection". But when you view the likes of these in the light of recent events- and countless other examples of those on his side doing what they had hysterically warned about others doing- I don't think there's any doubt that's the case here any more.

(*) Yes, I'm aware that Netanyahu has been gagging for something like this for decades and would have been pushing him in that direction anyway. And that, whatever transparently hollow concerns they claim for civilians, pushing for a cut slice of Iranian oil and benefiting sales of their own was a motive. But why would the supposedly war-averse Trump suddenly change at this specific point with no obvious motive? Well, we can make a likely guess.

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

You are describing a problem with every group that takes a "fundamentalist" approach to their "religion of choice." Historically, either man has oppressed woman or woman has been in partnership with man (as is the case in the well-balanced historical First Nations cultures of North America.) But there are far more than enough who have oppressed women and who still have a bone to pick with women who prove to be more educated, more knowledgeable, and better paid than their sorry illiterate arses.

There are NO SHORTAGE of such "Christian Fundamentalist" groups in the US, especially in the deep south and midwest, who are currently proclaiming Trump as a "new Christ", despite the fact that Christ has never preached war, oppression, mass murder, genocide, homophobia, pedophilia, criminal activities and convictions, or fraud as "ideals" of any kind.

And it is never "awful" to be Canadian. Thanks to our early participation in WWI and WWII and our reputation for tenacity and bravery in the face of deadly assault, our nation is respected and trusted around the world. There are very, very few nations where Canadians are unwelcome visitors. The same is emphatically not true of the aggressive states of america and never has been.

Furthermore, we're better known for solid trade agreements that we stick to rather than egregrious assault on foreign nations through illegal tariffs...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

But the ........ geese ..........

[Voice of Salinity]

If OT security Stux, net result is bad.

[Will Godfrey]

Of course they are

Why employ expensive on-site people when you can use cheap network connections from anywhere in the world...

...

... OH!

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: Of course they are

yes but think of the shareholder value you created, and thus richly rewarded for when you implement fully remote control and can then fire all the locals.

And then clear off to your next job leaving the a gaping security hole and the current IT department as the ones to blame when the company gets hacked eventually......

[Blue Screen of Bleurgh]

Ironically I was watching a film last night called "Sneakers" (1992) with Robert Redford and Sidney Poitier, regarding a team of cyber hackers accessing critical US infrastructure. government departments, finance houses and airports.

Fast forward 34 years and here we have Iranian cyber actors doing very much the same thing for real and not for the first time either. The fact this has happened before under the noses of the the FBI and US cyber defence agencies, and is still happening, makes me wonder how secure such infrastructure etc really is!

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

Security is like any other chain (chain of trust, in this case): it is only as strong as the weakest link, which can be as simple as a lazy technician leaving a password on a post-it note in the drawer, or someone blindly "authenticating" application access without having done anything to have caused such a request to be required.

Then there is good old fashioned incompetence and laziness, which even Artificial Ignorance systems emulate with their hallucinations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Default passwords

CyberAv3ngers broke into US-based water facilities by using default passwords for internet-accessible PLCs.

FFS, a five year old could get into plcs with a default password! OK maybe a 10 year old.

I've been through this with several of my UK based customers over the past 5 years and talked to them about decoupling their control systems intranet from the outside internet.

Mostly they have listened but there are one or two who still insist that their "engineers" [technicians] need to be able to access a plc in the UK from another country - generally for no good reason that I can discern.

[Taliesinawen]

Don't connect your water and energy facilities to the Internet!

Well then, don't connect your water and energy facilities to the Internet!

[Sandtitz]

Well, duh!

Well, duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Phew, it's just as well that president Trump wasn't...

...trying to slash CISA's budget by $707m at a time when Iran poses an elevated threat to US cybersecurity and infrastructure like this.

Because that would be really fucking stupid, wouldn't it?

[DS999]

Re: Phew, it's just as well that president Trump wasn't...

Well he already fired or induced to quit a number of them so even if they get a full budget they will be far less effective.

Some might say he WANTS a major cyberattack, or some other type of major attack on US soil, to give him a pretext to attempt to cancel the elections this fall that will be devastatingly terrible for republicans due to Trump sinking to a nearly 2:1 unfavorable margin.