Tag Archive for: Radioactive

Spanish Police Arrest Alleged Radioactive Monitoring Hackers

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Police in Spain have arrested two people on suspicion of hacking the country’s Radioactivity Alert Network (RAR).

The RAR, operated by Spain’s General Directorate of Civil Protection and Emergencies, is a network of gamma radiation sensors. It monitors parts of Spain – which operates nuclear power plants – for excessive radiation.

The two individuals are former workers for a third-party contractor responsible for maintaining the system, said Spanish police. It accused them of disabling over a third of the sensors in an attack between March and June 2021.

The Directorate warned police of the attack in June 2021, and the National Police Cyberattacks group analyzed the operation. The hackers compromised the RAR management’s computer system, allegedly operating from a public hospitality network in Madrid. They attempted to delete the RAR management web application and also attacked over 300 of the network’s 800 sensors, the police said.

“They had a deep knowledge [of the system] that made it easier for them to carry out the attacks and helped them in their efforts to mask their authorship, significantly increasing the difficulty of the investigation,” said police in a statement (translated).

The police did not elaborate on the motive for the attack. However, the attack caused the sensor connections to fail, reducing the ability to detect radiation around some of the country’s nuclear power plants.

“While it’s great to see that the Spanish police took the cyber-attack against the country’s radioactivity alert network (RAR) extremely seriously, it should also serve as a stark reminder of the need to secure cyber-physical devices within the critical infrastructure industry,” said Simon Chassar, CRO at industrial cybersecurity company Claroty.

“Cyber-physical devices such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices and Industrial IoT (IIoT), are not always designed with security in mind, meaning they can have a number of vulnerabilities for threat actors to exploit.”

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Cybersecurity and the NRC: A Primer for Radioactive Materials Licensees | Morgan Lewis – Up & Atom

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As is clear from recent news reports, cybersecurity hacks and breaches have been trending upward for some time, and there has been a noticeable uptick over the last several months—including in the energy industry. As a result, President Joseph Biden has committed his administration, in large part through the American Jobs Plan and his executive order of May 12, to strengthen cybersecurity across the nation.

Notably, the American Jobs Plan makes $20 billion in energy infrastructure investments contingent on cybermodernization, and the executive order creates a “playbook” in an effort to harmonize the federal response to cyberincidents. But what controls are in place for the nuclear industry, including commercial users of radioactive materials, and which agency has jurisdiction over such matters? We address these issues briefly here.

EVOLUTION OF THE NRC’S CYBERSECURITY REGULATIONS

The NRC’s jurisdiction over and regulation of cybersecurity for power reactor (nuclear power plant) licensees is well established and well documented. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the NRC began evaluating cyberrisks and the need for associated protections at nuclear power plants. These efforts resulted in 10 CFR § 73.54, Protection of Digital Computer and Communication Systems and Networks, finalized in 2009, and the subsequent Regulatory Guide 5.71, designed to advise licensees on how to meet the regulatory requirements. But cybersecurity controls for radioactive material users are less straightforward. Nevertheless, as described below, several federal agencies, including the NRC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have been active in this space over the last several years.

THE WORKING GROUP: FORMATION AND SCOPE

In 2012, the NRC identified a need to evaluate cybersecurity threats for radioactive materials licensees in SECY-12-0088. To accomplish that goal, in July 2013, the NRC established the Byproduct Materials Cyber Security Working Group (the Working Group), whose goal was to identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities among certain users of “risk-significant radioactive materials” to determine if the NRC should initiate any regulatory action to address…

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