Cyber-attacks, Ukraine, Estonia, Russia, BlackEnergy, KillDisk, Worm, DDos, TDoS, SCADA
We have encountered a variety of devastating cyber-attacks over the past decades, outcomes of minor ones like replacing a bronze statue of a Soviet soldier to major ones which initiated a global conflict.
The Morris Worm 1988:
A university graduate student Robert Tappan Morris developed a program to assess the size of the internet. The program would crawl the web, install itself on other computers and then count how many copies it has made to indicate the number of computers connected to the internet.
However, Morris made a command that forced the worm to install itself on a computer every one out of seven times, the infected computers would become further debilitated until they finally crashed. It was the first Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, and it was entirely by accident.
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ESTONIA Cyber Attack:
On April 27, 2007, the computer networks of a majority of Estonian enterprises, including banks, newspapers, broadcasters, ministries, and the parliament, were disrupted by this cyberattack. The different websites of the Estonian government and corporations were constantly under attack by adversaries. Many experts think that hundreds of thousands of machines(botnets) were used in the cyberattacks against the Estonian government and businesses causing Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS).
A Soviet World War II memorial has been taken down from Tallinn, the nation's capital, by the Estonian government. Due to this move, the Russian minority community in both Estonia and Russia saw increased public sentiment, which in turn spurred the attack.
UKRAINE Power Grid Attack:
Date: December 25, 2017
Attacker: The Sandworm Group (suspected)
Target systems: Microsoft Windows-based Operating systems
Method: An enhanced form of the BlackEnergy malware is thought to have been used in the attack's initial phase. The malicious code targeted specific individuals inside the various energy corporations in order to obtain administrator credentials and gain access to the energy substation networks via email attachments. The attackers launched a damaging malware called KillDisk during the second phase of the attack, which was able to wipe portions of computer hard drives and prevent systems from rebooting, ultimately causing power outages. The attackers also launched a TDoS attack (telephone denial of service) on the call center for customers, stopping the callers from reporting the outage.
Aftereffect: In Western Ukraine, the attack caused at least 2 million consumers to lose electricity. Because the hackers had infiltrated the SCADA's manufacturer firmware, manual intervention by on-site operators was needed to resume the substations' regular operation.
What is your favorite cyber attack?
Cyber attack on ESTONIA
Ukraine power grid attack
Notpetya Malware attack [Ukraine]
WannaCry Ransomware attack
In part 2 we will go over the cyber-attacks that occurred in 2017 and after, in specifics.