Denmark energy cyber attack highlights infrastructure security gaps


November 2023 saw an unprecedented cyber attack on Denmark’s energy infrastructure. In a co-ordinated breach of 22 companies, criminal gangs gained access to industrial control systems.

Investigators believe at least one of the attackers was acting on behalf of a state. Michael Murphy, who heads Fortinet’s APAC Operational Technology group from the company’s Sydney office, says critical infrastructure was compromised: “Energy generation sites were forced into island operation mode, where they are no longer centrally managed.” He says the affected companies had a next-generation cybersecurity product in place that they assumed would protect them from any threat. It didn’t.

Read more…
Source: The New Zealand Herald News


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Dissected: A dropper-as-a-service miscreants pay to push their malware onto potentially 1,000s of victims

    September 2, 2021

    A dropper-as-a-service, which cyber-crime newbies can use to easily get their malware onto thousands of victims’ PCs, has been dissected and documented this week. A dropper is a program that, when run, executes a payload of malicious code. The dropper is similar to a trojan, and it can sometimes have other functionality, but its main purpose ...

  • Scam artists are recruiting English speakers for business email campaigns

    September 1, 2021

    Native English speakers are being recruited in their droves by criminals trying to make Business Email Compromise (BEC) more effective. BEC schemes can be simple to execute and among the most potentially devastating for a business, alongside threats such as ransomware. A BEC scam will usually start with a phishing email, tailored and customized depending on the ...

  • Google Play Sign-Ins Allow Covert Location-Tracking

    September 1, 2021

    It’s possible to track someone’s user location via Google Play sign-ins, a researcher has discovered – a potential stalker avenue that, so far, the internet behemoth has yet to address. “With the aid of Google I was able to ‘spy’ on my wife’s whereabouts without having to install anything on her phone,” said Malwarebytes Labs researcher ...

  • Ransomware Awareness for Holidays and Weekends

    August 31, 2021

    CISA and the FBI have released an advisory warning of potential cyberattacks that may occur over the coming Labor Day weekend, noting that in recent years hackers have launched dozens of devastating attacks on long weekends. They urged organizations to take steps to secure their systems, reduce their exposure and potentially “engage in preemptive threat hunting ...

  • Cyberattackers are now quietly selling off their victim’s internet bandwidth

    August 31, 2021

    Cyberattackers are now targeting their victim’s internet connection to quietly generate illicit revenue following a malware infection. On Tuesday, researchers from Cisco Talos said “proxyware” is becoming noticed in the cybercrime ecosystem and, as a result, is being twisted for illegal purposes. Proxyware, also known as internet-sharing applications, are legitimate services that allow users to portion out ...

  • LockFile Ransomware Uses Never-Before Seen Encryption to Avoid Detection

    August 31, 2021

    Researchers discovered a novel ransomware emerging on the heels of the ProxyShell vulnerabilities discovery in Microsoft Exchange servers. The threat, dubbed LockFile, uses a unique “intermittent encryption” method as a way to evade detection as well as adopting tactics from previous ransomware gangs. Discovered by researchers at Sophos, LockFile ransomware encrypts every 16 bytes of a ...