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Iranian hackers shut down UK power plant for 4 days
- sajithdilshan 2mo agoWhy would a power plant system be exposed to internet in the first place
- Gys 2mo agoTo enable work from home?
- goda90 2mo agoI would hope critical infrastructure would have someone on site 24/7. The Internet could go out, roads blocked, and weather too dangerous for a helicopter and you'd still want power to flow. If people want to work remotely, they could have a human-bridged air gap where change instructions are followed by someone on-site.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- toast0 2mo agoI don't know about power plants, but for critical water infrastructure, there's usually not even a building for someone to sit in 24/7 and at least 99% of the time there would be nothing for them to do.
- goda90 2mo agoMaybe we bring back the "lighthouse keeper" type jobs for remote infrastructure
- pjc50 2mo agoMore likely windows updates. Serious answer: there's a big plan to network everything for metrology purposes. At the very least feeding real time frequency, voltage and phase information from every point of interest on the grid into a big dashboard.
- dreamcompiler 2mo agoIt's likely that much of this stuff is still running on Windows XP which doesn't even receive updates. But of course it's still exposed to the internet.
- wongarsu 2mo agoThere are plenty of reports that this happens and at least as of a couple years ago wasn't even that uncommon. Including CCC talks. People want to do remote maintenance, and apparently not everyone has a good enough internal IT to put this traffic on a VPN
- ndsipa_pomu 2mo agoI find it difficult to believe that a power plant doesn't have enough resources to employ at least one person who could implement a VPN - even if it's just some cousin of a senior manager.
- tsimionescu 2mo agoA VPN is not some foolproof system that guarantees you can't be hacked. If you're connected to the internet, people can probe your systems. Heck, Stuxnet proved they can do it even if you aren't.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- seydor 2mo agoDRM license verification
- ImHereToVote 2mo agoOfc. For the Stuxnet vulnerability.
- tsimionescu 2mo agoBecause power plants need to coordinate to serve the grid, and there is currently a single Interconnected Network of computers out there. Would it be a good idea to create a secondary network for power control and similar critical functions, completely isolated from the internet and from any outside countries? Perhaps - but it doesn't even seem to be on the horizon for now.
- croes 2mo agoYou mean the companies that laid power lines across the country are too dumb/lazy/cheap to also lay some network cables?
- tsimionescu 2mo agoIt's much more than cables. You'd need an entire separate internet - ISPs, BGP, DNS, TLS PKI infrastructure, and probably many others. You'd also still need to very carefully keep this separate, as simply connecting an Internet and a "UK Power Plant Internet v2" cable into the same router or even laptop might invalidate all of the isolation you spent time building. Which is itself a losing battle, given that you need everyone's house to also be connected to this network. You, of course, then also need to ensure redundancy on this "UK Power Plant Internet v2", as you don't want to have a single point of failure such that a single router or cable somewhere being interrupted would create a network partition. And again, there is simply no one even considering this. All of the work going into smart grid coordination (strictly necessary for incorporating a large amount of renewable power generation in the grid) is 100% designed to work on top of the public Internet.
- alexthedigger 2mo ago[dead]
- pjmlp 2mo agoLet me guess, SCADA system is somehow accessible from outside.
- cineticdaffodil 2mo ago[dead]
- CrzyLngPwd 2mo agoThat reads like a scare story for MPs so they approve more money to some dodgy outfit that will save us all from the ever growing axis of evil...again.
- goalieca 2mo agoThis is greatly downplaying the hacking that has been made public, hasn’t been made public, and is continuously ongoing. Water treatment plants just publicly got hit in Canada and USA. The simple truth right now is that China, Iran, and North Korea, are actively hacking out companies and infrastructure. It’s a sort of Cold War.
- pasquinelli 2mo agoin the case of iran, it's hard to imagine it wouldn't be in retaliation for the infrastructure in iran that america has destroyed, so a cold war on one side, a hot war on the other.
- HappyPanacea 2mo agoIt seems unwise to attack UK when US attacks you.
- O1111OOO 2mo ago> It seems unwise to attack UK when US attacks you. UK's involvement in the 2026 Iran War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_involvement_in_the_2026_Iran_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_involvement_in_... United Kingdom and the Gaza "war": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_and_the_Gaza_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_and_the_Gaza_wa...
- arijun 2mo agoThey shot down some drones and lent an army base? Hardly rousing support. If I’m not mistaken, Jordan also shot down some drones, are they next up? I’ll agree with gp, in any case seems unwise to give the UK cause to further involve themselves.
- NordStreamYacht 2mo agoWhat goes around, comes around. What was the name of the SCADA hack dropped via USB drives in Iranian parking lots which brought down their centrifuges? Stuxnet.
- neves 2mo agoIf I were an incompetent manager that need to oversee crumble infrastructure, I'd like to blame my problems on evil hackers from the other side of the world. This story does not look real.
- edgyquant 2mo agoIn what way does it not look real? On the contrary a significant portion of the population seems to be totally swooned by Iranian propaganda and is not aware they are a malicious actor and have been for decades conducting much worse things on foreign soil than hacks
- hnlmorg 2mo agoI don’t think anyone in the west are swooned by Iran. Heck, a lot of Iranians aren’t even swooned by the Iranian propaganda. What I think you’re doing is misinterpreting the wests disgust at Trumps war with Iran as favouring Iran when in fact what we actually feel is disdain for both parties.
- madaxe_again 2mo agoYou mean like stuxnet? Oh, wait…
- surgical_fire 2mo agoIt's more that a lot of people stopeed being swooned by US propaganda, and woke up to the fact that the US is a malicious actor and have been for decades, conducting much worse things on foreign soil than hacks. I, personally, have a lot more mistrust towards the US than I have towards Iran. Mostly because Iran has very limited power to affect me negatively.
- Noumenon72 2mo agoHow would Iranian propaganda even enter the British population given the sparse cultural ties, saturation of media with domestic messaging, and the British government explicitly forcing public service content onto newsfeeds[1]? My expectation would be that Iranian propaganda makes zero inroads except with migrants from the region. 1: https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/fines-bans-forced-newsfeed-changes-an-overview-of-uk-online-censorship/ https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/fines-bans-forced-new...
- ktallett 2mo agoIt is either the fact most major infrastructure in the UK seems to be run on computer systems introduced by a man with no knowledge and struggles to turn on a computer. Or it is the start of a UK government attempt to reduce freedoms by stating look there are naughty terrorists out there that will do harm to the UK if we don't restrict programs and usage of systems. I imagine the former, but it will be used for the latter.
- logotype 2mo agoBoth can be true at the same time.
- recursivedoubts 2mo ago[dead]
- donohoe 2mo agoAnything from the Telegraph should be treated as suspect and an alternative source should be found.
- guiriduro 2mo agoThis point cannot be overstated - famously the Torygraph for its stance should always have been treated with a degree of scepticism under former editors but such journalistic standards it ever had are now long and completely defunct. A rubbish-laden agitprop comic.
- applicative 2mo agoEvery actual grown up treats every news source like this. The people who give us this sort of wisdom discredit themselves by proving they relate like credulous children to whatever news source they are using.
- lux-lux-lux 2mo ago“Every news source lies equally and is equally untrustworthy” does not sound like grown up analysis, Mr. Caulfield
- applicative 2mo agoThats not what I said, though, is it? I can destroy /any/ news source, if your criteria are destructive.
- GJim 2mo agoOh dear. All news sources are not equal.
- zipy124 2mo agoThe BBC reported on it many many hours ago at the same time [1] with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero confirming there was an incident. [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce9793g34yvo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce9793g34yvo
- benj111 2mo agoThe timing of this seems weird. The UK uses much more energy in the winter, so this isn't going to bring the grid down or anything. This just seems like a wasted attack, alerting us to the vulnerability.
- sivakon 2mo ago[flagged]
- zipy124 2mo agoThe BBC reported on it many many hours ago at the same time [1] with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero confirming there was an incident. [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce9793g34yvo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce9793g34yvo
- LatteLazy 2mo agoThe BBC’s just reported that the telegraph reported it was Iranians. Not that it actually was…
- cbeach 2mo agoPlease, not this juvenile “I disagree with the political leaning of a newspaper so I demand everyone else boycott it” student union behaviour. All sources have their biases. I could come up with several examples of the BBC and Guardian reporting very dubiously, for example (recently the BBC spliced together clips of the US President to make it seem he said something completely fictitious). Few sources are a paragon of truth. How about we just think critically, and think -independently- about the media we consume. Ignore the authoritarian blow-hards who think their choice of media is the only valid choice for the rest of us.
- claxo 2mo agoGives "Not found." now. Maybe retired?
- throwaw12 2mo agoComing soon: * Iran caused fall of German manufacturing * Iranian investors caused housing shortage in Netherlands * Iranians are pushing French to protest against pension age reforms
- jmyeet 2mo agoThe media is trying to manufacturer consent for a deeply unpopular war of choice that has already been lost. That's so weird. Why would Iran do this? They've already won. Nothing will change the fact that this war has been a complete strategic defeat for the US and its allies. This is the beginning of the end of dismantling the world order created by the US for the benefit of the US after 1945. That's how this will be written about in history books.
- mupuff1234 2mo agoDid iran win? Their economy is on the brink of collapse with no relief in sight, and countries are investing in infrastructure to bypass the strait. And sure oil prices have gone up, but not doomsday scenario prices. A bit of a pyrrhic victory if you insist on defining that as a victory. Sometimes everyone's a loser.
- reverendjames 2mo agoI run a power grid. We have our own fiber optic network, run on the towers. 100% air gapped. No working from home. No IOT. Nothing fancy. SCADA control center staffed 24/7. If I want to know something I call them. This is the only way.