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Ars technica - Computer intrusion inflicts massive damage on German steel factory
A German steel factory suffered significant damage after attackers gained unauthorized access to computerized systems that help control its blast furnace, according to a report published Friday by IDG News.
The attackers took control of the factory's production network through a spear phishing campaign, IDG said, citing a [pdf] report published Wednesday by the German government's Federal Office for Information Security. Once the attackers compromised the network, individual components or possibly entire systems failed.
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Computer Intrusion Inflicts Massive Damage on German Steel Factory
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My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
-- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet"
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday December 21 2014, @05:36AM
I have seen way too much industrial stuff getting so complex that its all one can do to just get it to run, much less understand exactly what it is internally doing.
Well it was Germany.
So that guarantees 46 layers of indirection via tables within tables, and complex inter connections, any one of which is only used on tuesdays, and only if it is raining. Maintenance is built into the sales price for the firs 4 years, after that you have to order parts from their Brazil field office, paying up front with your first born.
Overly Complex and finicky is their middle name.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday December 21 2014, @09:50PM
If we're going to make German jokes, combining your theory with my theory, and the plot of at least two decades old movies, see, millions of billets of raw steel go thru the steel mill every year, and with typical German precision they all come out as perfectly shaped, glowing red hot construction I-beams that are 10.000000 meters long. Maybe more decimal places. But being red hot, they've expanded and thus shrink when they cool. So when the trucks leave, they're shipping out 9.999999 meter long steel I-beams not ten meter long I-beams.
Now what happens to all those tiny slivers of steel, because we put in 10 meters of raw billet and get 9.999 meter I-beams? Well all those fractions add up. So when they ship out an I-beam, we're going to load those slivers of steel into our material account. We're not really stealing because its just a sliver of a millimeter at a time, you know. I'm trying to impress this waitress chick I met at Oktoberfest and she hates here job because they make her wear flair, just like hitler made the juden wear flair on their uniform, but ... Oh wait channeling Office Space again. I swear I worked at a place like that in the early 00s.
Anyway they downsized the firewall guy and took away his red stapler so he's willing to put our "special" software patch in via the SCADA network, which much like the laser printers, is connected directly to the internet (anyone else from the 90s remember printing to random people's printers over the internet of the era? I never did anything horrible, although I actually did accidentally print to other peoples "shared" printers a couple times... it was an early 90s thing).
So I'm just saying millions of thin little pieces of steel add up to enough to make another eiffel tower after awhile, and now they gotta cover it up or else its PMITA prison time, blah blah you seen the movie too. And for the F of it lets smash up an old laser printer because "PC LOAD LETTER" to gangster rap, because that was cool for middle aged white guys a long time ago. Or was it just painfully embarrassing, not cool? Oh yeah the latter, definitely the latter.