INCIBE-CERT

In the electricity sector, it has always been necessary to use robust communications that allow proper communication, since a failure in this sector would cause a large number of losses, both economic and social.In addition, with the technological advances, it is important also to have secure communications since the electricity sector is one of the sectors that currently suffers the most cyber-attacks. For this reason, in recent years different robust and secure protocols have been created.One of these protocols is DNP3, created mainly for the use of substation automation and control systems, for the electric utility industry, although it has now also been used for other sectors.Finally, in this article we want to explain in more depth the operation of this protocol and the benefits or disadvantages of using this protocol.

CAPEC (Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification) is a project that focuses on enumerating and classifying common attack patterns on computer systems and providing a systematic approach to understanding and addressing the tactics used by attackers. Like CWE (Common Weakness Enumeration), CAPEC is an initiative of the computer security community and is maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States. Recently in version 3.9, the project has incorporated a number of attack patterns related to the industrial world.This article aims to show the reader the use of these codes, such as those used at the identifier level in CVEs, CWEs, etc., and which are related to many of the jobs that are carried out on a daily basis in the industrial cybersecurity sector.

Since its appearance in 2022, Black Basta has established itself as one of the most dangerous ransomwares in the current landscape, standing out for its ability to carry out double extortion attacks, stealing and encrypting data from its victims. Although it focuses on Windows systems, versions for Linux systems that attack ESXi hypervisors have also been discovered. At the end of December 2023, a renowned ethical hacking lab in Berlin published a decryption tool on GitHub to combat it. Although the group has recently updated its software to fix this flaw, the release of the decryption tool represents a major blow against its operations. In this article, we take a closer look at how this ransomware works, exploring the methods it employs to compromise the integrity of data and systems and presenting the decryption method for its vulnerable version.