The number of cyber-attacks on industrial systems increased by 636% in two years

IBM X-Force team has published an annual information security report on the study of cyber-attacks on industrial systems (SCADA). According to the report, in two years, the number of cyber-attacks on SCADA-systems increased six-fold (636%).

According to the experts, development of "Internet of Things" has allowed enterprises to significantly reduce the cost and improve the quality of maintenance of industrial systems, but at the same time provided many opportunities for cybercriminals to compromise them.

Since the discovery of Stuxnet, SCADA-systems vulnerability to cyber-attacks sparked interest not only of security researchers, but of hackers as well.

According to the IBM X-Force report, the bulk of the problems found in industrial systems account for buffer overflow vulnerabilities. Their use may result in a denial of service or may allow hackers to implement remote code execution so that they can gain complete control over critical infrastructures.

To gain access to the industrial system attackers use a variety of methods. According to IBM X-Force data for August 2015, the main sources of attacks on industrial systems were the US (70%), the United Kingdom and Italy (10%), Canada, Japan and the Netherlands (5%). Basically, attackers were interested in SCADA-systems located in Canada (23%), the USA (17%), Hungary and Israel (14%), SecurityLab reports.

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