Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosion; experts fear retry

Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by sandworm101 on Thursday March 15, 2018 @09:12AM (#16592483)

>>> Within minutes of the attack at Tasnee, the hard drives inside the company’s computers were destroyed and their data wiped clean, replaced with an image of Alan Kurdi, the small Syrian child who drowned off the coast of Turkey during his family’s attempt to flee that country’s civil war.

Attacks meant to do physical harm or shutdown systems do not resort to 1990s trickery like copying an image billions of times. This is industrial vandalism and, even if a danger exists, should not be described as an attempt to murder people. Such damage, such unwanted activity within an information system, can happen without any ill intent by anyone. Therefore those designing large systems need to incorporate such failures into their plans. The failure of multiple drives due to some runaway process should never be capable of causing an explosion.

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Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by jack6e on Thursday March 15, 2018 @09:24AM (#16592582)

It sounds like you are confusing the multiple attacks described in the article. The most recent attack in August 2017, the primary focus of the article, was indeed intended to manipulate controls and cause an explosion. The January 2017 attack, part of a string of them, is what you are describing. That one was not suspected of intending physical destruction but, "to inflict lasting damage on the petrochemical companies and send a political message."

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Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by sandworm101 on Thursday March 15, 2018 @09:38AM (#16592703)

The article is the one muddling the various attacks. It gives the impression of campaign of multiple attempts at murder, when in fact we have a plurality of attack intents, evidence imho of very different attackers.

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Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by konceptz on Thursday March 15, 2018 @09:58AM (#16592866)

Or one attacker with (intentionally) multiple intents.

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Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by zellyn on Thursday March 15, 2018 @09:18AM (#16592522)

The image proves it's not industrial espionage only if you're playing a very shallow game. I expect that anything that muddies the waters helps the attackers. Attackers are quite familiar with forensic and analysis techniques, and you'd have to be a pretty naive attacker not to include red herrings and intentional pointers to shift the focus to someone else.

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Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by pbhjpbhj on Thursday March 15, 2018 @10:53AM (#16593331)

You might be naive, or you might want people to know it was you, or you might be doing a false flag operation, ... telling which it is seems hard.

Cf. recent attempted murder with nerve agent in UK.

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Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by the-dude on Thursday March 15, 2018 @11:45AM (#16593813)

The family was already living in Turkey, so they were not fleeing "that country's civil war". The family were economic migrants seeking to enter Europe.

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Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by Nomentatus on Thursday March 15, 2018 @01:58PM (#16595086)

Single-MO theory is now out of fashion even in policing.

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