Month: December 2017

Power grid in Gowkthrapple, UK. (credit: geograph.org.uk)

Hackers who may have been working on behalf of a nation recently caused an operational outage at a critical-infrastructure site, researchers said Thursday. The attackers did so by using a novel piece of malware to target the system that prevents health- and life-threatening accidents.

The malware was most likely designed to cause physical damage inside the unnamed site, researchers from the Mandiant division of security firm FireEye said in a report. It worked by targeting a safety instrumented system, which the targeted facility and many other critical infrastructure sites use to prevent unsafe conditions from arising. The malware has been alternately named Triton and Trisis, because it targeted the Triconex product line made by Schneider Electric.

"Mandiant recently responded to an incident at a critical infrastructure organization where an attacker deployed malware designed to manipulate industrial safety systems," Mandiant researchers wrote. "The targeted systems provided emergency shutdown capability for industrial processes. We assess with moderate confidence that the attacker was developing the capability to cause physical damage and inadvertently shutdown operations."

Enlarge / A five-foot-tall (1.5 meter) outdoor K5 security robot patrols the grounds of the Washington Harbour retail-residential center in the Georgetown district of Washington, DC, July 26, 2017. (credit: ROB LEVER/AFP/Getty Images))

As of Thursday morning local time, a San Francisco animal adoption agency will immediately halt its recent use of a controversial security robot.

The move comes after the San Francisco SPCA had been scrutinized for its deployment of a Knightscope K9 to mitigate vandalism and the presence of homeless people at its Mission District office. Knightscope, a Silicon Valley startup, declares on its website that its robots are the "security team of the future."

That robot made headlines when Business Insider reported Tuesday that "Robots are being used to deter homeless people from setting up camp in San Francisco."

Enlarge / Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai arrives for his confirmation hearing with the Senate Commerce Committee on July 19, 2017 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla )

The Federal Communications Commission voted today to deregulate the broadband industry and eliminate net neutrality rules that prohibit Internet service providers from blocking and throttling Internet traffic.

The repeal of net neutrality rules became a near-certainty about a year ago when Donald Trump won the presidency and appointed Republican Ajit Pai to the FCC chairmanship. Pai and Republican Commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Brendan Carr provided the three votes necessary to overturn the net neutrality rules and the related "Title II" classification of broadband providers as common carriers.

Democrats Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel provided bitter dissents in today's 3-2 vote. Despite the partisan divide in government, polls show that majorities of both Democratic and Republican voters supported the rules, and net neutrality supporters protested outside the FCC headquarters before the vote.

Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai listens during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC, on June 20, 2017. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Just as the FCC was about to vote on eliminating its net neutrality rules, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was interrupted by a staffer and then called for a break in the meeting.

"On advice of security, we need to take a brief recess," Pai said.

A security official then advised attendees to leave all of their belongings in place, and everyone left the meeting room. There was no word on when the meeting will continue. But as long as the meeting resumes today, the repeal vote should proceed as expected.

Enlarge (credit: Liz West)

In 2015, Microsoft announced its intent to bring OpenSSH, the widely used implementation of the secure shell (ssh) protocol used for remote system access and administration throughout the UNIX world, natively to Windows. Without too many people noticing, it turns out that the company has now done this. The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update adds a couple of optional features, with both client and server now available for installation (via Serve The Home).

Add the feature from the Optional Features settings page and, well... I think it works, but I'm not entirely sure because I can't make it work. It can't use my RSA key—Microsoft's issues list on GitHub says that only ed25519 keys are supported at present—but my ed25519 key isn't working either. I have seen people successfully use it with password authentication, but I don't have a password-authenticated server to actually test with right now. Both my keys work fine from Windows Subsystem for Linux ssh, so I'm confident that they're fine; the native Win32 program just doesn't like them for reasons that aren't at all obvious at this time.

I'm sure that eventually the wrinkles will be fixed. This is a beta and it's not installed by default, so hiccups aren't a huge surprise. But it's another little sign that Microsoft is continuing to embrace the wider world beyond Windows. I don't expect that ssh will become the main tool for administration of Windows machines any time soon—though with the ssh server and PowerShell, even that isn't impossible to imagine—but when this works, it's going to make connecting to and using other systems from Windows that bit more convenient.

Enlarge / The holiday season is always stressful, perhaps more so for the Alderson family. (credit: USA Networks)

Warning: This story contains spoilers for S2 and S3 of Mr. Robot.

Early in last night’s S3 finale, Elliot has engineered his way into an FBI mole’s apartment and must search for something. If he can find what the Dark Army has on this guy, he/Mr. Robot thinks, then maybe they can leverage that and take down the Dark Army. Drawers frantically open, paper and pictures toss about, and then…. Irving, the hacker collective’s fixer, calmly appears out of nowhere to flip through books on the FBI agent’s shelf.

“I just finished this book. I got it on tape. I didn’t care much for the ending. Story can have a mediocre beginning, middle, and often times it does. But it’s always gotta have a ‘wow’ ending—otherwise, what’s the point?” he tells Elliot. “And whatever scheme you’re trying to come up with, it’s not going to change the inevitable.”