ICS malware analysis study: BlackEnergy

Posted on 15/02/2024, by
INCIBE (INCIBE)
Threat analysis study decorative image
The industrial environment, especially the energy sector, is one of sectors that is suffering the most from cyber-attacks. This trend has been increasing in recent years, as this is one of the most information-sensitive sectors and can cause major problems, both economically and socially.One of the best examples of malware attacks is BlackEnergy. This malware became known for being able to compromise several electricity distributors on 23 December 2015, causing households in the Ivano-Frankvisk region of Ukraine (a population of around 1.5 million) to be without electricity.For this reason, due to seriousness of this type of cyberattacks, it is necessary to continue researching and investing in industrial cybersecurity, to reduce the damage caused by this type of cyber-attack in industrial environments.

NB-IoT the ideal and low-power conection for IIoT

Posted on 08/02/2024, by
INCIBE (INCIBE)
Decorative photo about Industrial Internet of Things
IoT networks are very useful for everyday life, but their use is not limited only to this type of environment; there are industrial environments where this type of networks can benefit connectivity between industrial devices and provide capabilities that other types of networks could not. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project or 3GPP developed the NB-IoT protocol, a protocol for when networks with higher performance, higher speed and high interconnectivity capacity between devices are required. This protocol can work both in IoT devices and in IoT devices in the industrial environment (IIoT).

RPKI: securing Internet routes against attackers

Posted on 01/02/2024, by
INCIBE (INCIBE)
Decorative photo RPKI: securing Internet routes against attackers
The Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) is essential for Internet routing security, as it provides a method to securely connect IP addresses to autonomous systems (AS) by validating route information. RPKI effectively prevents BGP Hijacking-type attacks, where potential attackers maliciously redirect Internet traffic. This article aims to explore the design, implementation, and benefits of using RPKI to ensure security and authenticity in Internet routing.

Cibersecurity in the healthcare sector: features, threats and recommendations

Posted on 25/01/2024, by
Juan Díez González
Cibersecurity in the healthcare sector
After the pandemic, it has been observed that the healthcare sector has been one of the most attacked by cybercrimilas and organizations. This has generated a significant impact on the affected organitations, making it essencial to protect this sector due to its strategic nature and to achieve this, it is neccesary to understand its characteristics and the threats that affect it.

Industrial security 2023 in numbers

Posted on 18/01/2024, by
INCIBE (INCIBE)
decorative image Industrial security 2023 in numbers
Article summarizing the Industrial Control Systems (ICS) alerts published during the year 2023 on the INCIBE-CERT website, with emphasis on different indicators, such as criticality, type of attack, etc.The motivation is to give the published notices an added value, in order to compile the information of the whole year as a logbook. In addition, this type of article was well received in previous years, showing in several talks the graphs of the article to argue the exponential growth of vulnerabilities in ICS. 

OPC UA, balancing cybersecurity and performance

Posted on 11/01/2024, by
INCIBE (INCIBE)
Industrial factory at night
The OPC UA (OPC unified architecture) communication protocol is the most modern standard presented by OPC Foundation. Currently, the OPC UA protocol is one of the most widely used in industrial environments, due to its ability to interconnect different devices, regardless of their base protocol and vendor.Throughout this article, a technical assessment of the protocol will be conducted, explaining in detail the technical capabilities that allow a high level of cybersecurity to be implemented without causing performance losses in the devices. 

Ransomware families: response and recovery actions

Posted on 04/01/2024, by
INCIBE (INCIBE)
Ransomware families: response and recovery actions
Ransomware, one of the top cybersecurity threats in today's landscape, allows criminals to hijack data and demand ransoms. Although there are various families and variants, some are especially destructive. These cybercriminals have refined their methods, using everything from complex extortion to bug bounty-type programs. In the face of these challenges, we will explore tools and strategies to recover from and defend against such attacks.

Top 20 ICS mitigations during 2023. Part 2

Posted on 28/12/2023, by
INCIBE (INCIBE)
Top 20 ICS mitigations during 2023. Part 2
Second part of the Top 20 mitigations for industrial environments. This part will focus on mitigations related to network architecture, industrial protocols, network configuration and vulnerability scanning.

Top 20 ICS mitigations during 2023. Part 1

Posted on 21/12/2023, by
INCIBE (INCIBE)
Top 20 ICS mitigations during 2023. Part 1
In the industrial world, there are a large number of systems, equipment, networks, areas, ducts, cloud environments, IT-OT environments, etc. In recent years, the number of attacks on industrial environments has been growing exponentially, and not only on purely industrial environments, but also on corporate environments that are connected to industrial environments. These IT environments being access points for attackers due to this IT/OT connectivity.