Water Utility in Europe Hit by Cryptocurrency Malware Mining Attack

Unauthorized cryptocurrency mining attacks come to industrial control systems for the first time, as cryptojacking attacks continue to grow.

Unauthorized crytocurrency mining attacks, sometimes referred to as "cryptojacking" have found a new target - operational technology used in critical industrial infrastructure.

Representative image, source: Pixabay

Security firm Radiflow, discovered that cryptocurrency mining malware was found in the network of a water utility provider in Europe. The attack is the first public discovery of an unauthorized cryptocurrency miner impacting industrial controls systems (ICS) or SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) servers.

"This is the first instance of such a cryptocurrency miner that we have seen in an industrial site," Ilan Barda, CEO of Radiflow, told  eWEEK .

In a cryptojacking attack, cryptocurrency mining code is deployed without authorization on a system or a network. Mining is the computation process that is executed by participating systems as part of a mining pool to create or discover coins Multiple cryptojacking attacks have been reported in recent weeks, including a large attack against YouTube, as well as attacks against un-secured SSH and Oracle WebLogic servers, as attackers have aimed to profit from the rising value of cryptocurrency.

"We found malware on the utility's server that was mining Monero cryptocurrency," Yehonatan Kfir, CTO at Radiflow told  eWEEK .

Read full article: eWEEK

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Taxonomy

• Technology
• Data Management
• Water Utility
• Infrastructure
• Integrated Infrastructure
• Utility Management
• Water Software
• Security
• Security
• Cyber Security
• Data & Analysis