SCADA system vulnerabilities [LWN.net]

SCADA system vulnerabilities

Posted Jun 12, 2008 1:32 UTC (Thu) by pynm0001 (subscriber, #18379)
Parent article: SCADA system vulnerabilities

Good questions indeed.

I would expand the list of concern out farther than nuclear power plant
though.  Any power plant which had their control system compromised and was
subsequently taken offline could have disastrous effects on the power grid,
whether coal or uranium is the fuel.

This is assuming of course that the reactor protection and emergency core
cooling systems do not depend on network functionality (i.e. disabling
interlocks must happen manually, or at least electronically, but not
remotely via network).  If the NRC actually allowed nuke plants to control
their reactor safeguards systems over a network then they are incompetent.

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SCADA system vulnerabilities

Posted Jun 13, 2008 17:13 UTC (Fri) by pascal.martin (subscriber, #2995) [Link]

As much as I know, nuclear safety systems are fully independent from the plant's scada system
and built using the same safety design guidelines as the commercial aircrafts are. This
usually exclude network. These safety systems have no real user interface anyway.

None of the nuclear plant engineers I have met thus far wanted their systems to be connected
to the internet. Even when the network ventures out of the plant to a nearby office, I have
seen the (dedicated) link being encrypted using military equipment.

There is a trend however within the scada communauty: VPN access for remote maintenance. The
most cautious (i.e. most customers) keep the link disconnected. It is connected on request
from an identified source, after some level of management approval (i.e. it is a bit of a pain
to work with, except when this is the customer who calls you first..).