5 ms·

I remember a rule a controls engineer once told me: never connect the plant to the Internet. Nothing clever, no humorous quip, no deep insight. Just don't do it

I remember a rule a controls engineer once told me: never connect the plant to the Internet. Nothing clever, no humorous quip, no deep insight. Just don't do it. If you do need to get data out to the living world, and you will, then you carefully set up individual firewall rules just for the data system - which very much can not drive the process system. This is where I begin ranting on the topic. Why? Because plants aren't secure. They're meant to run all the time by people who may or may not know how to properly use a mouse. There will be passwords taped to monitors, systems that automatically log in to prevent start up delays, and authentication of the order that it-better-just-work-by-default. Under no circumstances should that damn system ever, ever be exposed to the outside world. Not by Ethernet, wireless, or flash drive. It's a young innocent facing the cruel, brutal internet; it's going to get hurt. New plants are fancy and have highly trained workers with brilliant industrial IP wireless systems with state of the art VM servers and oh god did that guy just plug his phone charger into the damn wrapper HMI and now Windows media player has popped up and no one can acknowledge alarms (this partly why PCs tend to be in large metal boxes, that and dirt/water). No imagine that sort of silliness, but driven by the less savory from outside the intranet. Just don't risk it. You'll never have a problem, and no one is ever going to care enough to hurt the plant... Except but for that one time when suddenly all the convenience and hubris won't bring back the machine that just slagged itself from some malicious command from outside.

superuser2 12y ago
The terrifying part of this is that computers with Windows Media Player installed are running critical infrastructure. Shouldn't that be a stripped-down Linux machine with perfectly understood characteristics and close-to-zero attack surface? Yes, your scenario is bad I can totally see it happening, but the problem is not that an employee plugged in his phone, it's that you are using a desktop OS for office workers for controls that really non-optionally need to always just work. Maybe it's not a Windows Media Player launch, but what happens if Java shows up in the taskbar wanting an update, or your anti-virus software (yikes) wants to bug you about updating its definitions, or a modal dialog from the OS comes up? The fact that those are even things that can happen is pretty scary.
- sigkill 12y ago
  >The terrifying part of this is that computers with Windows Media Player installed are running critical infrastructure. Shouldn't that be a stripped-down Linux machine with perfectly understood characteristics and close-to-zero attack surface? Maybe I'm appealing to the wrong sentiment but most of these control softwares aren't available for Linux. Large CO2 generation plants, tissue plants, whatchamaycallit, it's just not available. So, the problem is with the vendors. Another problem is that the people who decide to buy the software are completely clueless about what is secure or not. They may ask for 'advice' from their more tech savvy juniors but that is merely a formality to confirm their view point, as anything contrary to their already decided viewpoint is quickly discarded with the mental rationalization of 'He probably doesn't have my experience' or 'I know better because I'm senior and I've been around these longer than him.'
  - FranOntanaya 12y ago
    Still begs to reason why wouldn't they provide a stripped down industrial Windows for these cases, rather than just a layer of Enterprise apps on top of the regular thing. Even their "Enterprise for Manufacturing" page is all about apps and Metro tablets.
    - zb 12y ago
      They do, it's called Windows Embedded, and OEMs customise it to include only the components they need.
  - bbrian 12y ago
    > that is merely a formality to confirm their view point Is there a term for this? I often give out to people when I see they're just going to discard my advice if it's not what they have already decided.
    - mrlyc 12y ago
      Confirmation bias.
- 12y ago

superuser2 12y ago

The terrifying part of this is that computers with Windows Media Player installed are running critical infrastructure. Shouldn't that be a stripped-down Linux machine with perfectly understood characteristics and close-to-zero attack surface? Yes, your scenario is bad I can totally see it happening, but the problem is not that an employee plugged in his phone, it's that you are using a desktop OS for office workers for controls that really non-optionally need to always just work. Maybe it's not a Windows Media Player launch, but what happens if Java shows up in the taskbar wanting an update, or your anti-virus software (yikes) wants to bug you about updating its definitions, or a modal dialog from the OS comes up? The fact that those are even things that can happen is pretty scary.

sigkill 12y ago
>The terrifying part of this is that computers with Windows Media Player installed are running critical infrastructure. Shouldn't that be a stripped-down Linux machine with perfectly understood characteristics and close-to-zero attack surface? Maybe I'm appealing to the wrong sentiment but most of these control softwares aren't available for Linux. Large CO2 generation plants, tissue plants, whatchamaycallit, it's just not available. So, the problem is with the vendors. Another problem is that the people who decide to buy the software are completely clueless about what is secure or not. They may ask for 'advice' from their more tech savvy juniors but that is merely a formality to confirm their view point, as anything contrary to their already decided viewpoint is quickly discarded with the mental rationalization of 'He probably doesn't have my experience' or 'I know better because I'm senior and I've been around these longer than him.'
- FranOntanaya 12y ago
  Still begs to reason why wouldn't they provide a stripped down industrial Windows for these cases, rather than just a layer of Enterprise apps on top of the regular thing. Even their "Enterprise for Manufacturing" page is all about apps and Metro tablets.
  - zb 12y ago
    They do, it's called Windows Embedded, and OEMs customise it to include only the components they need.
- bbrian 12y ago
  > that is merely a formality to confirm their view point Is there a term for this? I often give out to people when I see they're just going to discard my advice if it's not what they have already decided.
  - mrlyc 12y ago
    Confirmation bias.
12y ago