MalCrawler Corp. released a new Threat Intelligence report titled "Hacking the Power Grid: Analyzing what Hackers do when they have access to the 'Power Grid Honeypot'". The research which shows a wide range of hackers trying to access what they think is an electric utility's energy management system (EMS), was presented at SecurityWeek's 2015 ICS Cyber Security Conference, longest-running cyber security-focused conference for the industrial control systems sector.
"We set-up a sophisticated trap to observe hacker behavior. Our novel approach let hackers think they were controlling key parts of the power grid, including nuclear power generators, major transmission lines, smart grid distributed automation systems, and more," said Parvez Ahmed, a vice president at MalCrawler.
The MalCrawler honeypot attracted everyone from novices to sophisticated Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors sponsored by nation states. As the prospect of cyberwarfare increases, this groundbreaking research provides valuable intelligence into hacker behavior. U.S. lawmakers, policymakers, cybersecurity experts, intelligence community, and industrial system operators can now learn what a hacker would do if they have access to the most important pieces of a country's critical infrastructure.
