Category: Nuclear

Hacking fears are raised at Western Europe's most hazardous building, why porn sites might soon be scanning your face, and our guest narrowly avoids a Facebook Marketplace scammer. All this and much more is discussed in the latest edition of the award-winning "Smashing Security" podcast by cybersecurity veterans Graham Cluley and Carole Theriault, joined this week by Dinah Davis.

Ukraine Nuclear Plant was targeted by a DDoS cyber attack launched by a group of cyber hackers. And details are in that the digital assault was launched by the Kremlin-funded ‘People’s Cyber Army’.

Getting deep into the details, Ukraine’s Energoatom has released a press statement dismissing rumors that the whole of its power plant was in the control of Moscow. It also cleared the air that none of its operations were disrupted, unlike what is being said in a certain section of media.

As per the statement released by Energoatom, the group of cyber hackers launched a distributed denial of service attack aka DDoS using about 7.25 million bots under control of its digital experts.

The attack was carried out in the afternoon hours of Monday and was simulated over 4 times on the website of Energoatom. However, no physical or virtual damage was witnessed in the attack, as the electricity generating company from nuclear power had taken adequate measures to prevent any scale of downtime from such cyber incidents.

In what was found in the Prima facie, the aim was to first take down the website and then all the servers of the company, pushing the customers into a well-planned blackout. But in the early hours of Tuesday, the cyber army received a telegram channel note from a high-level military officer to stop the digital assault, hence directing the full force towards a new target that was apparently found to be Ukraine’s Institute of National Remembrance.

NOTE 1- Right from day one of the war with Ukraine, i.e. from the early hours of February 24th,2022, Russia has been trying its best to take control of the nuclear power plants in Ukraine. In fact, it took control of the Zaporizhzhia power plant in March the first week of this year. But now it is slowly going into the hands of Ukraine forces as they have started a retaliation strike.

NOTE 2- Confirmed sources say that Russia is thinking about starting a dialogue with the West and is intending to stop the war with the Zelensky-led nation only if all goes well.

 

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1.) Conti Ransomware gang reportedly hit Parker Hannifin Corporation in March this year leaking sensitive details to the public. The company that is into the manufacturing of motion control products released a press statement yesterday, stating a breach of its systems in between March 11 and March 14th this year.

Exposed details include personal info of current and former employees, dependant information of Parker’s Group Health Plans, social security numbers, DoBs, addresses, driving license details, some banking info, and insurance coverage dates.

From May 12th this year, Parker began informing all its users who have been affected by the cyber Conti Ransomware gang and assured that it will not bow down to the demands of hackers.

2.) Second, is the news related to the government of Britain: On May 12th 2022, the UK Government pledged to improve the current cybersecurity posture of its civil nuclear reactors as they were vulnerable to cyber attacks from Russian Intelligence.

Since, the Boris Johnson led government has been constantly supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, NCSC, a cyber arm of GCHQ issued a warning that there is a high probability that all the critical infrastructure operating in United Kingdom might be targeted by digital attacks y Kremlin at any time soon.

For this reason, the Government of the United Kingdom released a National Cyber Strategy 2022 Framework under which the IT infrastructure of all the civil nuclear reactors will be strategically reviewed and bolstered if/when necessary.

Cyber Threats are not new to the government of Britain. But it has made its approach cautious in the vague of a Russian war with Ukraine.

3.) Third is the news related to Elgin County website and email services that went offline in April this year due to leak of sensitive information from a Cybersecurity incident.

Going forward into the details, officials from Elgin County state hackers accessed over 26k files and information related to about 300 people fraudulently and highly sensitive details pertaining to around 53 people were leaked in the attack. This includes health card numbers, social insurance data, financial data and health history belonging to the Elgin County.

Julie Gonyou, the CAO of the County, assured that her staff have taken all necessary precautions to avoid such incidents in future and will provide 12 months of credit monitoring and identity theft protection to all 53 individuals whose sensitive details were accessed by hackers.

 

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