Thirdly, there would be little reason to even try unless it's an inside job, because the installations are all different. No one outside the project has any way of knowing that Q56.7 (Siemens speak for an output connected to some actuator) is the shear cylinder valve output.Yeah, I was wondering about that myself. Perhaps some of them keep the schematics on the same PCs that are running PCS7 ;-). During the Cold War, the commies had no problems getting the schematics for absolutely anything.
So in short, the story here is that people used hardware and software viewed by the experienced, sensible, and cautious sector of their community as too vulnerable and unreliable for management of critical processes, and ended up getting burned. That's newsworthy?Well, it did enter at least 14 plants, in “the U.K., North America, Korea,” and, mostly, Iran. And it looks like some foreign government is behind this. Even if the sysops were incompetent, it is newsworthy.
Still wondering about the default passwords. How could that happen?
Doktor Fritz Ferdinand von Wonkersleben: Remember, Akhmed, you need to change the passwords.Akhmed: Stop talking down to me, infidel dog!
The first is a good point, and the second is for any target of high value to the hacker, as these plants would be in the scenario you describe.
Well, it did enter at least 14 plants, in “the U.K., North America, Korea,” and, mostly, Iran. And it looks like some foreign government is behind this. Even if the sysops were incompetent, it is newsworthy.
Hmmm, true. I guess it IS news after all but the headline should be "Incompetent controls engineers endanger US infrastructure! Immediate corrective action necessary!"