News & Events.
exida Article on Cybersecurity Featured in Hydrocarbon Processing
August 29, 2018
An article on ICS cybersecurity written by Dr. William Goble is featured in the July 2018 issue of Hydrocarbon Processing.
Unfortunately, nation states appear to be launching cybersecurity attacks on other nation states. In this “arms war,” some attacks have been focused on industrial control systems (ICS). Three of these ICS cybersecurity attacks are notorious:
- Stuxnet (2009): A Siemens system attack to change PLC operating code.
- Industroyer/Crash Override (2015): An attack on the Ukrainian power grid that shut down a portion of Kiev.
- Triton (2017): A well-targeted attack on a distributed control system (DCS) and a Triconex safety instrumented system (SIS), believed to be an attempt to cause damage to the plant.
The Triton attack appears to be the most ambitious. Experts speculate that the attackers were trying to disable the safety system before causing the process to go out of control via another attack on the process controller. This action could have caused a major incident. It is fortunate that the Triconex Logic Solver initiated a shutdown of the process when it detected an internal anomaly.