POLCYB Conference

Friday, December 2^nd, I participated in a panel session at the POLCYB Conference held at the Secret Service offices in Los Angeles. POLCYB is the Society for the Policing of CyberSpace whose goal is to enhance international partnerships to prevent and combat crimes in cyberspace. There were more than 50 attendees from all over the world. As with most conferences, the ICS cyber security issue were new.  In fact, a major pharmaceutical company representative mentioned he called his senior management after my presentation. As best as he could tell, ICS cyber security was not being addressed. Because the Conference was in LA, there were numerous representatives from the entertainment industry. They were surprised to find out that ICS cyber security issues affect them. The Secret Service gave a presentation on skimming gasoline pumps at service stations.  Like other control systems, gas pumps have universal keys (default passwords) for setting pump flow and pricing. This has led to compromises that have cost service stations thousands of dollars. A security research organization gave a presentation on botnets. The last slide was future predictions of which there were eight - ICS were not identified. Finally, a presentation was made on Stuxnet. The presenter was not aware of the generic vulnerabilities that could be used against any target. 

ICS cyber security is still not well understood even by organizations involved in setting international standards.

Joe Weiss