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Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) cyber security researchers warn of a potential distributed attack against urban water services that uses a botnet of smart irrigation systems that water simultaneously.
The researchers analyzed and found vulnerabilities in a number of commercial smart irrigation systems, which enable attackers to remotely turn watering systems on and off at will. They tested three of the most widely sold smart irrigation systems: GreenIQ, BlueSpray, and RainMachine smart irrigation systems.
“By simultaneously applying a distributed attack that exploits such vulnerabilities, a botnet of 1,355 smart irrigation systems can empty an urban water tower in an hour and a botnet of 23,866 smart irrigation systems can empty flood water reservoir overnight,” Ben Nassi, a researcher at Cyber@BGU, says. “We have notified the companies to alert them of the security gaps so they can upgrade their smart system’s irrigation system’s firmware.”
Water production and delivery systems are part of a nation’s critical infrastructure and generally are secured to prevent attackers from infecting their systems. “However, municipalities and local government entities have adopted new green technology using IoT smart irrigation systems to replace traditional sprinkler systems, and they don’t have the same critical infrastructure security standards.”
In the study, the researchers present a new attack against urban water services that doesn’t require infecting its physical cyber systems. Instead, the attack can be applied using a botnet of smart irrigation regulation systems at urban water services that are much easier to attack.
The researchers demonstrated how a bot running on a compromised device can detect a smart irrigation system connected to its LAN in less than 15 minutes, and turn on watering via each smart irrigation system using a set of session hijacking and replay attacks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 11 2018, @03:36AM (3 children)
It's called a reduced instruction set competition (RISC). Possibly you've heard about it. All the Cool Kids™ use it and all the others aspire to. Just because these bots don't have complex behavioural patterns like the recent Dota champions doesn't mean they don't pack a punch. Just you wait until your water tap keeps going and going and going and going and going and going and going...
It's gonna be glorious. And very Murrican. Like in California, where they water their front "lawns" and fill their pools while farms are struggling to keep a crop and desertification is creeping in like it's the fucking Sahara. Let the stupid bots win!
USA! USA! USA!
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday August 11 2018, @04:13AM
One of the instructions is "Spray water" and the other is "Don't spray water". That's pretty reduced all right.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday August 11 2018, @04:34AM (1 child)
California wildfires are being magnified & made SO MUCH WORSE by the bad environmental laws which aren't allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also TREE CLEAR to stop fire spreading!!!!
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday August 11 2018, @07:49AM
The Pacific Ocean is highly flammable. If we didn't release that water the whole thing would go up. As it is, we can barely keep the Ring of Fire around the edge from smoldering, and sometimes it starts burning right in the middle, like in Hawaii. We need to keep that water coming to control the fires in the Pacific.
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