Posted by Martijn Grooten on Mar 5, 2019
At VB2017 in Madrid, ESET researchers Anton Cherepanov and Robert Lipovsky presented a last-minute paper on Industroyer, a malware framework that was responsible for the December 2016 blackout in Ukraine.
The attack was perhaps less noteworthy for what it achieved (a relatively short blackout) than for the potential it signalled. Such was the premise of Dragos researcher Joe Slowik, who presented a full paper on the framework at VB2018 in Montreal.
The framework, which Dragos calls CRASHOVERRIDE (the name difference stems from a different opinion on its focus), includes very sophisticated ICS-specific malware but uses standard "living off the land" techniques to move within an infected network. In his paper, Joe explains in detail how the malware works and how it targets various protocols used to operate the electric grid.
Today we have published Joe's paper in both HTML and PDF format. We have also uploaded the video of his presentation to our YouTube channel.
Anatomy of an attack: detecting and defeating CRASHOVERRIDE
If you're going to be at the RSA Conference in San Francisco this week, make sure you check out the two talks Joe will deliver there.
And of course, don't forget that the Call for Papers for VB2019 remains open until the end of next week (deadline 17 March). Analyses of attacks against ICS, or tools to analyse or fight them, are very welcome.
