A different kind of “smart” technology greatly simplifies our lives. This is due to the presence of electronic components on the nodes of the so-called smart home may be vulnerable to hacker attacks. Almost happened on one of the European petrochemical plants where connected to the local network of the enterprise the coffee machine is infected with the infamous virus WannaCry.
The news said one of the users of the forum Reddit with nick C10H15N1. According to him, he is a chemical engineer in the company, which owns a number of European petrochemical plants. He also told about how the monitoring of the information security of enterprises. Surveillance is carried out remotely from the Central control room. If you have any problem turn to the Central office, and the issue is resolved either remotely or by means of transfer instructions. In the extreme case, the location is sent to a specialist. About a month ago I received a call which reported the failure of all computers of the local control tower. All systems at the plant worked fine, and suffered only a monitoring system.
During the investigation of the incident found out that the computers had been infected by one of the software versions to extort money virus WannaCry. After a complete reinstallation of Windows XP (as it is still installed on some PC in the corporate segment), the infection occurred again. Then were able to determine that the source of the virus was a local Wi-Fi network and the only device in addition to router and router connected to it was a smart coffee machine. It was connected also with the internal network of the control point that explained the infection monitoring system. Clearing the virus from the machine, the system was able to normalize.
Recall that the WannaCry virus began to spread in the spring of this year. It encrypts information on the hard disk of the user for the decryption key offers to transfer the amount in bitcoin equivalent to 300 US dollars.
The coffee machine was infected with a virus petrochemical plant
Vladimir Kuznetsov