Marina Krotofil – Rocking the pocket book: hacking chemical plant for competition and extortion

https://www.hacktivity.com Fear of cyber-attacks with catastrophic physical consequences easily capture public imagination. The appeal of hacking a physical process is dreaming about physical damage attacks lighting up the sky in a shower of goodness. Let’s face it, after such elite hacking action nobody is going to let one present it at a public conference. As a poor substitute, this presentation will use a simulated plant for Vinyl Acetate production for demonstrating a complete attack, from start to end, directed at persistent economic damage to a production site while avoiding attribution of production loss to a cyber-event. Such an attack scenario could be useful to a manufacturer aiming at putting competitors out of business or as a strong argument in an extortion attack. Designing an attack scenario is a matter of art as much as economic consideration: the cost of an attack can quickly exceed damage worth. The talk will elaborate on multiple factors which constitute attack costs and how to optimize them.