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Logic bombs and control systems

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Submitted by jweiss on Fri, 02/19/2010 - 16:58.

There is a thread on the SCADAsec listerver (scadasec@news.infracritical.com) about logic bombs in control system devices.  There has been at least one case where logic bombs were maliciously inserted into electric control system devices by vendor personnel. There is another "logic bomb" case that wasn't malicious that caused a wide area outage. I have addressed this case in my book.
Joe

...and it's in the S4 2008 proceedings book...

Submitted by Ralph Langner on Sat, 02/20/2010 - 20:30.

Actually this had already been discussed two years ago at S4 in a paper and presentation titled "SCADA threat modeling using attack scenarios" by myself and Bryan Singer. Logical (time) bombs will most likely be used by any serious attacker to maximize damage and to maintain strike capability after online access is lost. Online access can/must be expected to be lost after the threat has been made credible, so this would likely be anticipated in the attack strategy.