A demo of how to hack Siemens industrial control systems was cancelled at TakeDownCon after the department of Homeland Security and Siemens asked the security expert presenters—nicely—not to show the audience how these systems can be breached. These industrial systems, called SCADA for “supervisory control and data acquisition” control such things as factory operations, power plants…and warships.
Apparently, the plan was for Siemens to find a fix for the vulnerability before the demo, but the company tried and failed. “We felt it would be potentially very negative to the public if information was put out without mitigation being available,” Rick Moy, CEO of NSS Labs told Computerworld. NSS Labs was to have co-presented the session.
All in all, we’re just as glad that the hacker community didn’t find out yesterday how to screw around with battle cruisers. But we’re wondering what happened during that presentation time slot instead.
If you have the answer, let us know.
Read more at Computerworld.
