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Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief

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Re: Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief

#71

Post by judge2020 »

barbazoo wrote: post #41
clbrmbr wrote: post #5

There are many wireless pump-and-reservoir systems that while not internet connected, use insecure RF links. These local RF (and casting a wider net, Bluetooth) interfaces are also ripe for abuse.

If that means you need to at least be physically present then I'd say that's a lot of protection already. Means someone in a foreign country can't simply get lucky fuzzing.

Alternatively, small drones exist, and so do low power devices you could slingshot/shoot into a secure area and set to auto wipe after they've done their job. Maybe could even build it out of biodegradable material so it'll clean up in short time.

Re: Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief

#72

Post by gz5 »

what does belong on the internet in a post-mythos world?

one argument: only services which need to be available to unauthenticated endpoints should be default reachable.

all other services should be default unreachable (no data plane until authorized ...then use internet and other networks to establish the connections).

yes, that is not always easy. it is much more possible than it used to be.

and arguably we now need to commit to the tradeoffs of default unreachable services.

Re: Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief

#73

Post by judge2020 »

jacobgold wrote: post #56
ungreased0675 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nsa.gov/Cybersecurity/Cybersecurity-Advisories-G... While that’s not the job of the NSA, they do produce a lot of good cybersecurity guides.

NSA's job is SIGINT, so it's at least partly their responsibility when the threat is foreign. For example, the NSA should be successfully infiltrating every major foreign hacking team in the world and monitoring and/or disrupting their activities.

> the NSA should be successfully infiltrating every major foreign hacking team in the world and monitoring and/or disrupting their activities.

I'm sure this exists, but I'd expect CIA to be more involved in any sort of covert operations across nation state lines, especially if undercover humans are involved.

Re: Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief

#74

Post by judge2020 »

pigbearpig wrote: post #58
jacobgold wrote: post #38

With coding agents now being used for hacking, there's a decent chance we'll see a 9/11-scale hacking incident as a result of NSA/DHS negligence in securing American internet-connected services. Similar to how the CIA's negligence allowed 9/11 itself. The USG should be deploying thousands of security engineers armed with the latest coding models and agents, in attempt to secure systems before they're hacked. A few bi…

How is it NSA/DHS negligence? Neither is responsible for securing the infrastructure of state and local governments nor private companies. They should provide guidance, but I’m not sure we really want the NSA inside of networks more than they already are. If voters and CEOs don’t want to spend the money required to secure their infrastructure, that’s on them.

> How is it NSA/DHS negligence? Neither is responsible for securing the infrastructure of state and local governments nor private companies.

It is not a duty nor their responsibility. It is however bad for nation overall if companies don't dedicate some resources to security, so a sane administration will do something to advocate for it.

Re: Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief

#75

Post by [deleted] »

polishdude20 wrote: post #70
amluto wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another odd observation about the industry. For better or for worse, I inherited a little system controlled by a Fanuc PLC. It had a bug and would occasionally get stuck in a bad state. By some minor miracle, I managed to track down the person who had originally programmed it (now retired and moved out of state), and he emailed me a file and introduced me to his apprentice (who lives in a third state). I found a tria…

The best thing they could do to new PLC's would be to have the src code live alongside the firmware inside. So any new person would be able to open it and reason about it.

[deleted]

Re: Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief

#76

Post by ssl-3 »

polishdude20 wrote: post #70
amluto wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another odd observation about the industry. For better or for worse, I inherited a little system controlled by a Fanuc PLC. It had a bug and would occasionally get stuck in a bad state. By some minor miracle, I managed to track down the person who had originally programmed it (now retired and moved out of state), and he emailed me a file and introduced me to his apprentice (who lives in a third state). I found a tria…

The best thing they could do to new PLC's would be to have the src code live alongside the firmware inside. So any new person would be able to open it and reason about it.

You mean like, just hang a thumb drive on a lanyard inside of the cabinet -- with source code and such?

That will probably just disappear. Maybe with good intention or maybe with bad, but it's probably gone either way.

If it doesn't disappear, then it's hanging right there for any of the competitors to use. That's a problem for the original installer's ongoing employment.

And if it includes the programming software, then that lets Joe (from over in shipping) have a go at rejiggering the packaging machine. That's a problem for whoever has to pay someone with a clue to show up and fix it.

Re: Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief

#77

Post by coryrc »

polishdude20 wrote: post #70
amluto wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another odd observation about the industry. For better or for worse, I inherited a little system controlled by a Fanuc PLC. It had a bug and would occasionally get stuck in a bad state. By some minor miracle, I managed to track down the person who had originally programmed it (now retired and moved out of state), and he emailed me a file and introduced me to his apprentice (who lives in a third state). I found a tria…

The best thing they could do to new PLC's would be to have the src code live alongside the firmware inside. So any new person would be able to open it and reason about it.

Relatedly, I made an embedded product. I built a live CD (yes this was a while ago) for my employer with the entire development environment. As long as you can find an x86 machine with CD-ROM you could build, compile, test, and program using the exact environment I did twenty years ago.

Maybe today I'd do micropython on ESP32. Download text file from device, edit, upload back on.

Re: Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief

#78

Post by aliasxneo »

amluto wrote: post #63
aliasxneo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I don't mean to poke fun solely on the integrators. I've seen the "software first" type land in the same role and flail just as hard, if not harder. I recall one individual, who was quite proud of his "beautiful" ladder logic code, after about 3 months of being at the company ended up destroying a $100k+ chiller plant by cavitating all of the pumps because they didn't understand head pressure. I think that's one…

Sometimes I wonder whether one could design PLC-style software by first expressing the system’s constraints and then writing the actual code and having either (preferably) formal verification that the code will not violate the constraints or (less preferably) enforced assertions that will send the machine into a safe state if the constraints do not hold. The system I mentioned in my other post controlled some VFDs, a…

A lot of PLC controllers can certainly be unforgiving. I mentioned overflowing a 16 bit float point because that's exactly what happened at a waste water treatment plant I was called out to and the resulting regulatory fiasco that ensued probably cost the company tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I'd love to see more formal methods come to the field. Part of me says I'll return one day, maybe if AI kicks me out of my software field, but I'd really want to come back at a position I could healthily influence towards safety and correctness.

Re: Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief

#79

Post by Kim_Bruning »

tamimio wrote: post #60
amelius wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive my ignorance but isn't a PLC simply a computer with some GPIO ports? I.e., a Raspberry Pi could be called a PLC? Why are we talking about them as if they are something else? Is it an exotic OS that makes them different?

Not really, sure you can use a rpi to control some hw but they are not the same, a PLC usually run rtos, is deterministic (you can predict timing) while rpi relies on linux OS and its scheduler, the PLC also uses ladder language or function block compared to rpi high level language, and obviously PLC industrial grade I/O both analog and digital that also deal with voltage noise that usually happens by field sensors,…

I used to think codesys on raspberry pi was pretty much the pessimal application of an ARM processor (and nothing has changed my mind so far). Here you have a chip that is famous for staying stone-cold and doing interrupts in microseconds , and instead you run it hot on a 50Hz (default) PLC loop instead.

Re: Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief

#80

Post by skinfaxi »

ssl-3 wrote: post #76
polishdude20 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing they could do to new PLC's would be to have the src code live alongside the firmware inside. So any new person would be able to open it and reason about it.

You mean like, just hang a thumb drive on a lanyard inside of the cabinet -- with source code and such? That will probably just disappear. Maybe with good intention or maybe with bad, but it's probably gone either way. If it doesn't disappear, then it's hanging right there for any of the competitors to use. That's a problem for the original installer's ongoing employment. And if it includes the programming software,…

> If it doesn't disappear, then it's hanging right there for any of the competitors to use. That's a problem for the original installer's ongoing employment.

Is that really an issue? Do PLC vendors have concerns about other vendors turning up and yanking USB drives out of critical infrastructure with reckless abandon? Do the facilities themselves see no issue with potential vendors yanking operational utilities out of their systems while they are running?

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