Last week I participated quite by accident in a NATO „live-fire“ cyber exercise called „Locked Shields“[1]. Part of it was held in my building since we provided work space for the team from Lithuania in this on-line international military exercise. I was interested in getting inside but without an invitation I thought I would just […]
Author: Vytautas Butrimas
NOTE: The views expressed within this blog entry are the authors’ and do not represent the official view of any institution or organization affiliated thereof.
Vytautas Butrimas has been working in information technology and security policy for over 28 years. Mr. Butrimas has participated in several cybersecurity exercises, contributed to various international reports and trade journals, and has published numerous articles on cybersecurity and policy issues.
That “Something wicked this way comes” is back again.
“Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.” ― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes Read an article about recent evidence that Triton/Trisis or something similar to it may have […]
Regarding OT solutions coming from traditional IT security vendors
“And I didn’t even know what a P.L.C. was, so I had to Google for “What is a P.L.C.?” That, even, baseline knowledge, we just did not have.” – Security company’s Sr. software security analyst trying to decode Stuxnet in Fall of 2010. Some IT people (including me) have waded into OT waters with the […]
Learning incomplete lessons from a famous cyber-attack can lead to surprising and unpleasant results
“Almost to a person, the disaster planners concluded that the Abqaiq extralight crude complex was both the most vulnerable point of the Saudi oil system and its most spectacular target” – R. Baer, “Sleeping with the devil”. When a cyber incident is publically disclosed it is not a time to name and blame. It is […]
Targeting Control and Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS): new escalation of cyber threats to critical [energy] infrastructure
“It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.” – Winston Churchill Introduction Industrial Control and Safety systems play an important part in insuring that the physical processes taking place in a manufacturing plant, power generation facility or other segment of critical infrastructure do […]
Computer Science programs may fall short in contributing to critical infrastructure protection
“There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?” – Advice given to a young man in the 1967 Film, “The Graduate” (1) In the 1967 film, “The Graduate” an older man gives insider advice to a young person struggling to decide on a future career. I was in […]
Attribution: An impossible/inconvenient task or a way to get an APT off one’s back?
Recently on the SCADASEC list there have been discussions of reports of cyber attacks on the critical infrastructures of other states with the naming of the state that is responsibe. Some say attribution of responsibility is far less important than actually investigating what happened and applying the lessons learned where appropriate. This latter approach is […]
Towards a Cyber Safe Critical Infrastructure: Answering the 3 questions*
What are the main challenges in implementing cyber security policies? There are several challenges in developing and most importantly, in implementing cyber security policies. However most successful efforts will be judged according to the way the following 3 important questions are answered: 1. What to protect? 2. From what cyber threats? 3. How, considering that […]
ICS cybersecurity at the crossroads: heading toward cyber peace or towards a “duty to hack”?
The year is ending and there have been several unsettling events in cyberspace this past year to reflect upon. They all seemed to have come together for me this past week as I completed my speaking engagements in Vilnius and in Garmische-Partenkirchen. The first conference was in Vilnius with the title “Baltic Energy Summit 2017 […]
Looking at the educational value of a famous cyber incident
In a recent discussion on SCADASEC one contributor spoke of the educational value of Stuxnet. Yes there are several lessons that can learned from an incident that was first made public in 2010. It has been well documented from a technical point of view but perhaps some lessons can be still learned from an international […]
