Thread: More Sophisticated Spyware Hits Utility Systems

Previous month's revelation of a sophisticated malware program targeting control system software from Siemens AG has rehabilitated long-standing worries regarding whether the U.S. power grid can endure targeted cyberattacks.

The malware, named Stuxnet, utilizes a Windows fault to find and steal industrial data from supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems running Siemens' Simatic Win CC or PCS 7 software.

SCADA systems are used to control dangerous tools at power corporations, manufacturing facilities, water handling plants and nuclear power operations.

Stuxnet is the initial publicly identified malicious software program written specially to exploit vulnerabilities in a SCADA system.

The Trojan agenda emerges to have been produced for industrial stealing other than can just as simply have been used to damage a SCADA system, said Eric Knapp, executive of dangerous infrastructure marketplaces at Nitro Security Inc.

The appearance of threats like Stuxnet drives residence the require for more federal mistake of cyber security in utilities sector, said Joseph Weiss, managing partner at Applied Control Solutions LLC. "Hacking a control system does not catch rocket science," Weiss said. "Protecting one does."