Kiev airport goes dark after 'BlackEnergy-linked' power outage

IT systems at Kiev's main airport were floored over the weekend, sparking a renewed warning from Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) about further BlackEnergy malware-based attacks. “Attention: system administrators present a short list of indicators [that] network systems and networks [have been] compromise[d …

[2460 Something]

Russia is a suspect? Don't believe it. Putin is such a trustworthy person and would never mislead us. It is obviously the will of the people being manifest psychically. Those Ukrainians are just very in touch with their spiritual side. Look at the facts, Russia had no involvement in the overthrow of Crimea, it was the will of the people once again psychically invited Russian special forces in cameo as freedom fighters. Oh wait, Putin admitted they invaded that one as soon as their patsy was chased out of Ukraine for blatantly ignoring everyone, signing some new deal with Russia and accepting Russia's dictate of no closer ties with the evil Europe. All for a measly boatload of cash! (Well who wouldn't).

OK, well we know there were/are absolutely no Russian troops in East Ukraine and definitely no sponsorship from the Kremlin. Once again it was purely the psychic will of the people that enabled them to hold-out for so long. All of those pictures of massive troop build-up just outside the border and tanks being transported on the back of carriers with all their tags cleaned off are just photo-shopped propaganda from the western oppression. Anyway as Putin said, he doesn't dictate where 50000 troops take their paid leave! That they may have borrowed a few vehicles/weapons/ammo to ensure they arrived safely at their holiday destination is of no concern of anyone else!

Now the Ukraine mind collective is really getting up to power. The will of the people has spoken via comrade blackout!

Remember that we are indeed all equal. But some of us are more equal than others.

[Anonymous Coward]

Irony curtain?

methinks 3 folk's sarcasm-detectors aren't working, 2460! have an upvote from me!

:-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Irony curtain?

Ex KGB agents are know for their lack of sarcasm-detectors, even now they're paid to patrol the Internet to ensure little Putin is never put in a bad light.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Irony curtain?

Oh, I'm positive that pretty-boy Putin and his boyfriends won't mind a little joshing at their expense. And might I say, Puti-poos has a make-up artist to die for, dahlinks!

[Anonymous Coward]

No prizes for guessing who the prime suspect is

These people?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/19/ms_shutters_twc/

[Holleritho]

Where are the frieds of the free world when you need them?

Ukraine is no angel, but it knows it needs to tackle corruption and to learn how to do things better. It is getting far too little help, and yet this country (as George Soros says) is key to Europe's future. Greece getting into trouble was a pain in the backside, but Russia in control of Ukraine, which has a whole generation wanting the opportunities of western Europe and willing to pay in blood and sweat for them, is left to go the way of Belarus. Can't GCHQ or even NSA spare Ukraine a few experts and help them harden themselves against these attacks? With so many Americans hankering for the old Cold War clarity of good and bad, here is a battlefield that can only being glory.

[MyffyW]

Re: Where are the friends of the free world when you need them?

The cynic in me suspects that old fashioned "spheres of influence" are at work.

I think the west are very unlikely to intervene to any meaningful extent in Ukraine, partly because of the restive Russian minority resident there. Likewise our relative quiet on Georgia.

Crap I know, but there we are.

[Crazy Operations Guy]

"Can't GCHQ or even NSA spare Ukraine a few experts"

I wouldn't trust their 'experts'. They couldn't even protect themselves from IT contractors lifting gigabytes worth of classified data from their networks...

But this is a problem that any rational security engineer could fix. Simple separation and packet inspection would go a long way to fixing things. Other than a few heavily monitored end-points, no data should be entering the operations network and only a few well defined pieces of data should leave it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Can't GCHQ or even NSA spare Ukraine a few experts"

If the NSA or GCHQ didn't expend so much energy in diluting computer security, then we wouldn't be in this mess.

[Paul Crawford]

Perhaps, just perhaps, we might see some sense returning and people not putting critical systems on relatively unprotected Internet end points?

Or not, if the bean counters continue to rule the roost...

[nilfs2]

They didn't reset the passwords...

...after Yanukovych fled to Rusia.

[ilyinilyas]

Really?

This is a very strange news)

First of all, there are no any blackouts had happened in Boryspil (KBP). I have not found any news about it on official KBP site or CERT-UA site.

Our ukrainian mass media inform that only one workstation had been infected. Of course, in common ukrainian news practice, mass media are pointed on Russian aggression (when any strange situation happens - blame the russians), they even informed about "russian server", but on CERT-UA news about this situation there are no any russian ip-addresses.

http://cert.gov.ua/?p=2464

If they have proofs - why don't they make them public?

I don't want to talk about politics (it is a dirty thing), but more and more often mass media prefer to make a mountain out of a molehill.