INTERVIEW: HACKING FACTORIES IS EASIER THAN YOU THINK

DirectIndustry Interviewed a Leading Cyber Security Expert to Discover Just How Vulnerable Companies Are to Attacks

We recently interviewed Franck Ebel one of France’s leading specialists in cyber defense and computer system intrusion protection, and he informed us of the serious risks that factories and industrial sites face everyday from cyber hackers. He said, “It is very easy to penetrate industrial systems using just a few keywords” taken from Google. He told us that everything is saved on the internet, and anyone with training can use tools called dorks to uncover system flaws to gain access to industrial systems.

Search engines like Shodan make it even easier to identify flaws and weak points. Mr. Ebel has come across cases where companies are still using the same passwords that were supplied in the manufacturer’s instructions. The most common form of attack today is denial of service (DoS), but ransomware attacks are on the rise. He outlined one of the core reasons industry is vulnerable to cyber attack. “Security is often neglected when creating industrial systems, even though they have a much longer working life than computerized management systems. In industry, an IT system can remain in place for dozens of years without being updated, without evolving”. He added “That would be unthinkable for most computers”.