Tag Archive for: Grid

Tangedco forms cyber security team to check grid hacking in Tamil Nadu | Chennai News

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CHENNAI: To ensure the safety of the electricity grid from cyber attacks, Tamil Nadu Electricity Generation and Distribution Corporation (Tangedco) has formed a dedicated team for cyber security for Tamil Nadu Transmission Corporation (Tantranso) and State Load Dispatch Centre (SLDC).
An information security division (ISD) and a security operation centre (SOC) have been formed by redeploying the existing officials in line with the guidelines issued by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) in 2021 for compliance by power utilities across the country.
There were reports of Chinese hackers targeting Indian power hubs last year. Tata Power confirmed it was hit by a cyberattack in October 2022.
The Union government has already set up a computer emergency response team under the power ministry to act as a nodal agency to coordinate all matters related to cyber security.
Framing of information security policy, implementing a security management system, and cyber crisis management plan, acquiring ISO 27001, conducting cyber security audits once in six months and mock drills are some of the cyber security measures Tangedco should incorporate to comply with CEA guidelines.
Currently, one assistant executive engineer and eight assistant engineers have been shifted to take care of the activities of ISD and SOC at the state load despatch centre, while two executive engineers and an assistant executive engineer will take care of the cyber security activities on behalf of CERT-GO and CERT-TRANS.
The chief engineer (personnel) at Tangedco has been directed to identify officers and redeploy them in the newly created posts. A senior official of the discom said that dedicated teams for cyber security have been formed to secure the power networks from the cyber-attacks leading to blackouts in future.

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Microsoft Identifies Chinese Hack of Indian Power Grid That Could Go Viral

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Hackers are utilizing a discontinued web server to launch attacks on energy grid infrastructure, Microsoft has warned, with the initial attack discovered on the Indian grid, carried out by Chinese hackers.

According to the software giant, the Boa server was used in routers, security cameras and popular software development kits. While Boa was technically retired in the early 2000s, it is still widely used in various devices, TechCrunch reported.

Microsoft announced this week that it had identified one million internet-exposed Boa server components around the world in a single week. The company warned that the components represent a “supply chain risk that may affect millions of organizations and devices.”

“Without developers managing the Boa web server, its known vulnerabilities could allow attackers to silently gain access to networks by collecting information from files,” Microsoft said.

“Moreover, those affected may be unaware that their devices run services using the discontinued Boa web server, and that firmware updates and downstream patches do not address its known vulnerabilities.”

Power grids, as critical infrastructure, are high-value targets for hackers.

Earlier this year, the Department of Energy began work on shoring up the defenses of the U.S. grid along with supply chain suspecting state-sponsored actors from Russia and China might target the infrastructure.

We really need to do a lot more,” Puesh Kumar, director of the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, told Bloomberg in March. “The energy sector is a very complex machine composed of a lot of different components, a lot of different players—and we really need to raise the security of all of them.”By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:

Read this article on OilPrice.com

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Grid Cards – MFA without the technical overhead

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This is part four of our MFA blog series for Cybersecurity Awareness Month. You can read up on blog one here, blog two here, and blog three here.

We already know the importance of multi-factor authentication (MFA) to secure access to resources for users in a world where passwords are the single largest attack vector. In a recent study, it was found that 81% of hacking-related breaches leveraged either stolen and/or weak passwords.

When thinking about MFA, many people automatically think about using mobile push notifications, SMS one time passcodes (OTP), and other mobile-centric authentication methods. But what about when frontline or field employees need access to critical resources and systems and don’t have access to a mobile device or where mobile devices are not allowed due to the sensitive nature of the data being accessed? Here are some scenarios where the use of mobile devices is not feasible:

  • Outsourced call centers with employees accessing systems connecting to sensitive data within your organization like customer PII.
  • Part-time customer service employees that handle critical customer data in order to provide a user with effective customer support.
  • Military field personnel that cannot use electronic forms of authentication due to the possibility of transmission interception.
  • Mobile emergency workers in emergency situations and it is not convenient or possible to carry mobile devices.

How do you enable MFA for these employees?

One way is the use of Physical keys like FIDO keys. But these can prove to be too expensive and inefficient to support. Keys can be lost or damaged and have to be replaced. When employees quit or new employees join, they need to be wiped and reconfigured.

What are Grid cards and how do they work?

Grid cards are an easy to use and cost effective way to provide MFA for users that cannot use mobile devices to log in to the required systems and applications. The Entrust Grid Card is a paper-based card that can be printed from a PDF file and contains a grid of rows and columns that consist of numbers and characters. As part of the MFA process, users are presented with a coordinate challenge and must respond with the information in the corresponding…

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Hacking our Freedom – By Unplugging the Power Grid | Columnists

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In 2009, When President Obama called for a “smart grid“” he was not just referring to the vast network of electrical transmission lines that crisscross our nation. While Obama spoke about integrating all power sources, including solar, wind, nuclear, and hydro, into one coordinated system that would seamlessly connect the US power grid into a Goliath that we could easily manage using advanced information technology via the web, he was preparing us for something greater than efficiencies of scale through the use of smart meters. Obama, now known by many as the ‘Puppet Master,’ was planning something greater, something much larger than internet control of the American Power Grid.

As General Thomas McInerney warned just four years earlier in 2005, China began a cyber and biowarfare policy directed against the United States. McInerney accused President Obama of constructing ‘The Swan‘’ which meant corrupting the justice system, the intelligence community, and various government agencies to accomplish a covert overthrow of our Constitution. Finally, and most significantly, McInerney noted secret collaboration with China – i.e., Fauci’s funding of the Wuhan bioweapon, COVID-19.

Obama appointed Melissa Hathaway as Senior Director of Cyber Security in January 2009. However, by August, she had tendered her resignation due to her inability to get her recommended protections implemented. Hathaway’s credentials as a top US intelligence official and former adviser to President Bush were impeccable. Although she attempted to downplay her resignation for personal reasons, her later outspoken criticism of the smart grid is revealing.

Hathaway became highly critical and vocal of Obama’s ‘smart grid’ idea and has disparaged it as “a dangerously dumb idea.”

The only problem with that description is that Barack Obama is anything but dumb. If one did not know better, one might conclude it was intentional. 

How a smart grid can be hacked is similar to the methods of attacking other items controlled by the internet. In another article in Scientific American, Thomas Campbell and Peter Haynes provide real-world examples. The first in 2010 occurred when the Stuxnet…

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