straycat19 Posted November 12, 2016 Share Posted November 12, 2016 Residents of two apartment buildings in Lappeenranta, a city of around 60,000 people in eastern Finland, were literally left in the cold this weekend. The environmental control systems in their buildings stopped working, and it wasn’t because of a blackout. It was actually a DDoS attack that took them down. Both buildings are managed by Valtia, a facilities services company headquarted in Lappeenranta. Valtia CEO Simo Rounela confirmed to Metropolitan.fi that the central heating and hot water systems in both buildings had been attacked. In attempt to fight off the attack, the systems rebooted — and subsequently got stuck in an endless loop. This is precisely the kind of thing that Chester Wisniewski at SophosLabs was concerned with when he urged makers (and users) of industrial control systems to take meaningful steps toward improving security. Fortunately for the residents, it’s not that cold in Lappeenranta. The high today should be around 20°F. That’s a few degrees below the historical average for November, certainly, but nowhere near the -25 they’ll see once winter finally arrives. Valtia quickly relocated those affected while they addressed the DDoS attack and brought the control systems back online. In that sense, it’s a good thing the attack happened now. At least Valtia had a chance to shore up defenses while the mercury in Finnish thermometers hasn’t plunged as far as it’s going to this winter. Something about this attack feels like the one launched on a Liberian mobile provider last week. Was someone probing a relatively small system in a relatively remote location just to test capabilities? It’s a strong possibility. The end game might be a much larger building managed by a company with much deeper pockets… and perhaps one willing to pay attackers to call off the dogs. Source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pc71520 Posted November 13, 2016 Share Posted November 13, 2016 When Distributed Denial of Service attacks freeze machines and...humans... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sylence Posted November 14, 2016 Share Posted November 14, 2016 why would someone target a harmless country like Finland Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pc71520 Posted November 14, 2016 Share Posted November 14, 2016 On 13/11/2016 at 0:17 AM, straycat19 said: Sophos Labs urged makers (and users) of industrial control systems to take meaningful steps toward improving security. F-Secure, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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