Iranian hackers shut down UK power plant for 4 days | Hacker News Reader

Iranian hackers shut down UK power plant for 4 days

telegraph.co.uk

That reads like a scare story for MPs so they approve more money to some dodgy outfit that will save us all from the ever growing axis of evil...again.

This is greatly downplaying the hacking that has been made public, hasn’t been made public, and is continuously ongoing. Water treatment plants just publicly got hit in Canada and USA.

The simple truth right now is that China, Iran, and North Korea, are actively hacking out companies and infrastructure. It’s a sort of Cold War.

in the case of iran, it's hard to imagine it wouldn't be in retaliation for the infrastructure in iran that america has destroyed, so a cold war on one side, a hot war on the other.

It seems unwise to attack UK when US attacks you.

>The simple truth right now is that China, Iran, and North Korea, are actively hacking out companies and infrastructure.

What for?

> The simple truth right now is that China, Iran, and North Korea, are actively hacking out companies and infrastructure

You forgot Russia. /s Why do "companies and infrastructure" need to run "in a browser" ?

Those same MPs decided, for example, that it should be mandatory for EV chargers to be internet connected.

They could do with a dose of reality, IMHO.

Coming soon:

* Iran caused fall of German manufacturing

* Iranian investors caused housing shortage in Netherlands

* Iranians are pushing French to protest against pension age reforms

Iran caused Game of Thrones season 8

Indeed, we underestimated them.

God forbid they cause an Independent Party.

Soon ? They already did it. Together with <insert unfriendly country here>

If I were an incompetent manager that need to oversee crumble infrastructure, I'd like to blame my problems on evil hackers from the other side of the world.

This story does not look real.

In what way does it not look real? On the contrary a significant portion of the population seems to be totally swooned by Iranian propaganda and is not aware they are a malicious actor and have been for decades conducting much worse things on foreign soil than hacks

I don’t think anyone in the west are swooned by Iran. Heck, a lot of Iranians aren’t even swooned by the Iranian propaganda.

What I think you’re doing is misinterpreting the wests disgust at Trumps war with Iran as favouring Iran when in fact what we actually feel is disdain for both parties.

You mean like stuxnet?

Oh, wait…

It's more that a lot of people stopeed being swooned by US propaganda, and woke up to the fact that the US is a malicious actor and have been for decades, conducting much worse things on foreign soil than hacks.

I, personally, have a lot more mistrust towards the US than I have towards Iran. Mostly because Iran has very limited power to affect me negatively.

How would Iranian propaganda even enter the British population given the sparse cultural ties, saturation of media with domestic messaging, and the British government explicitly forcing public service content onto newsfeeds[1]? My expectation would be that Iranian propaganda makes zero inroads except with migrants from the region.

1: https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/fines-bans-forced-new...

> How would Iranian propaganda even enter the British population

Haven't you heard ?They run the BBC, the Sky news, the Daily Mirror and the Sun. They also elect the parliament and the prime minister and send illegal imigrants to take the work of hard working citizens. /s

Anything from the Telegraph should be treated as suspect and an alternative source should be found.

This point cannot be overstated - famously the Torygraph for its stance should always have been treated with a degree of scepticism under former editors but such journalistic standards it ever had are now long and completely defunct. A rubbish-laden agitprop comic.

Every actual grown up treats every news source like this.

The people who give us this sort of wisdom discredit themselves by proving they relate like credulous children to whatever news source they are using.

“Every news source lies equally and is equally untrustworthy” does not sound like grown up analysis, Mr. Caulfield

Oh dear.

All news sources are not equal.

The BBC reported on it many many hours ago at the same time [1] with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero confirming there was an incident.

[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce9793g34yvo

Actually if you read your own link - the BBC is just saying that the Telegraph reported this.

And the same BBC article says that the Telegraph reported it as "the power plant was shut down for four days", whereas on the other hand, the UK Government DESNZ said it only "affected a small-scale generator" not even an entire power plant.

It's always difficult in these situations to read through the FUD and see what the truth is.

> The BBC reported on it many many hours ago at the same time

And i bet that a lot of "Eastern European" "news outlets", which have nothing to do with it, reported it. Funny how propaganda works.

Why would a power plant system be exposed to internet in the first place

To enable work from home?

I would hope critical infrastructure would have someone on site 24/7. The Internet could go out, roads blocked, and weather too dangerous for a helicopter and you'd still want power to flow. If people want to work remotely, they could have a human-bridged air gap where change instructions are followed by someone on-site.

More likely windows updates.

Serious answer: there's a big plan to network everything for metrology purposes. At the very least feeding real time frequency, voltage and phase information from every point of interest on the grid into a big dashboard.

There are plenty of reports that this happens and at least as of a couple years ago wasn't even that uncommon. Including CCC talks. People want to do remote maintenance, and apparently not everyone has a good enough internal IT to put this traffic on a VPN

DRM license verification

Ofc. For the Stuxnet vulnerability.

It is either the fact most major infrastructure in the UK seems to be run on computer systems introduced by a man with no knowledge and struggles to turn on a computer. Or it is the start of a UK government attempt to reduce freedoms by stating look there are naughty terrorists out there that will do harm to the UK if we don't restrict programs and usage of systems.

I imagine the former, but it will be used for the latter.

Both can be true at the same time.

Let me guess, SCADA system is somehow accessible from outside.

I run a power grid. We have our own fiber optic network, run on the towers. 100% air gapped. No working from home. No IOT. Nothing fancy. SCADA control center staffed 24/7. If I want to know something I call them. This is the only way.

The timing of this seems weird. The UK uses much more energy in the winter, so this isn't going to bring the grid down or anything.

This just seems like a wasted attack, alerting us to the vulnerability.

What goes around, comes around. What was the name of the SCADA hack dropped via USB drives in Iranian parking lots which brought down their centrifuges?

Stuxnet.

The media is trying to manufacturer consent for a deeply unpopular war of choice that has already been lost. That's so weird. Why would Iran do this? They've already won.

Nothing will change the fact that this war has been a complete strategic defeat for the US and its allies. This is the beginning of the end of dismantling the world order created by the US for the benefit of the US after 1945. That's how this will be written about in history books.

Gives "Not found." now. Maybe retired?

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