The internet of hacked things

Extract from ABC News

As the internet and the real world increasingly intersect, hackers are infiltrating critical infrastructure. We explore some of the most notorious cases.

Four Corners

Satellite communications

Newsat was once Australia's biggest satellite company, with systems carrying sensitive communications for the Australian Defence Force and mining companies.
In a 2013 meeting called by the Australian Signals Directorate, former IT manager Daryl Peter was told the company had been seriously infiltrated by foreign hackers. Mr Peter believed the hack was from China.
Newsat's former chief financial officer, Michael Hewins, said the company's IT staff were told its computers had been compromised in one of the worst cases Australian intelligence had ever seen.
They were told Newsat would not be allowed to launch its flagship Jabiru 1 satellite until major changes were made.
Jabiru 1 was a five-tonne state-of-the-art satellite that NewSat promised to launch, but it never got off the ground as the company eventually collapsed and went into administration.

Bureau of Meteorology

In April, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull confirmed the Bureau of Meteorology had suffered a significant cyber intrusion that was first discovered in 2015.
It was the first time there was official acknowledgement that a critical Australian Government agency had been penetrated by a sophisticated cyber attack.
The Government did not say it publicly but Australian intelligence sources have confirmed to the ABC that China was behind the attack.
Four Corners has been told the Bureau of Meteorology was probably just a gateway for a more sinister attack.
China's true targets may have been the Australian Geospatial Intelligence Organisation, which provides satellite imagery for sensitive defence operations, and a high-tech Royal Australian Air Force radar system called the Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN).
The JORN system is designed to detect planes and maritime vessels within a 3,000-kilometre radius of Australia's northern and western shorelines.
Beijing continues to deny responsibility for the attack.

Nuclear facilities

Stuxnet is the first cyberweapon known to cause actual physical damage.
At the time of its 2010 discovery by security researchers, it was the most sophisticated malware identified in the public realm.
Stuxnet targeted devices that automate electro-mechanical processes to sabotage Iran's uranium enrichment program in Natanz.
Since the nuclear facilities were not connected to the Internet, it is believed that the malware was deployed by infecting employees' home computers, and carried unknowingly into the facility via a USB flash drive.
Once inside the facility, the malware proceeded to override the Iranian scientists' internal network, forcing the centrifuges to spin at self-destructive speeds while making it appear that nothing abnormal was occurring.
It was not until loud noises were heard from the centrifuge chambers that Iran's nuclear scientists became aware that their system was failing.
It took another five months before researchers discovered that the culprit: Stuxnet.
Stuxnet is believed to have resulted in the destruction of roughly one-fifth of Iran's centrifuge stockpile.
It also represented an unprecedented moment in history, when cyber warfare finally spilled over into the physical domain.

Power grids

The first publicly acknowledged successful cyber intrusion to knock a power grid offline occurred in Ukraine during December 2015.
Widespread service outages were reported and it was soon discovered that about 30 substations became disconnected from the grid, leaving more than 225,000 customers freezing in the Ukrainian winter chill.
The attackers are also believed to have spammed the Ukrainian utility's customer-service centre with phone calls in order to prevent real customers from requesting assistance.
This was no opportunist act of hacktivism: those responsible were running a sophisticated and stealthy operation that would have required months of reconnaissance.
Although power was restored hours later, many functions had to be controlled manually for months to come; the firmware inside the control centres running the substations had been rendered inoperable by the attack.
Later, US security researchers found that the authors of the malware were writing in Russian. This malware was dubbed BlackEnergy.

Cars

In July 2015, American security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek demonstrated they could remotely hack a 2014 Jeep Cherokee, allowing them to control the car's transmission and brakes.
The vulnerability they had discovered was exploited via the wi-fi in the car's multimedia system; the number of affected vehicles ran into the millions.
They discovered they could crack a car's password through a method known as brute-forcing: literally decoding it through automated guesswork.
Since then, a number of other vehicles have proved to be vulnerable to hacking, including models manufactured by Tesla, BMW, Nissan and Mercedes Benz.
In response to security concerns, Tesla and Fiat Chrysler have both announced the establishment of bug bounty programs.
Such programs allow independent security researchers to submit vulnerabilities they discover to the company and can be compensated thousands of dollars for their efforts.

Drug infusion pumps

We've all seen infusion pumps in hospitals before. But what you probably don't know is that many are actually connected to the hospital's computer network.
In 2014, Californian researcher Billy Rios found he could remotely hack into hospital pumps that administer morphine and antibiotics to change the dosage level.
After Rios sent his findings to the Department of Homeland Security, they contacted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), who contacted the pumps' manufacturer, Hospira.
The FDA eventually issued an advisory recommending that hospitals stop using the affected model of pump Rios had studied.
But many more hospital pumps affected by similar vulnerabilities continue to be used today.

Steel mills

In 2014, the German Government confirmed that an unnamed steel mill was targeted by hackers, leaving one of its furnaces destroyed.
The German Federal Office for Information Security said the attackers used a combination of techniques to attack the facility.
They started by sending malicious emails to employees at the mill that surreptitiously stole login and password details.
Once inside the system, they exploited software used to administer the plant's operations, allowing them to stop the blast furnace from being shut down.

Building management systems

In 2013, Billy Rios and Terry McCorkle hacked into the building management system of Google's offices in Sydney.
Building management systems are interfaces that control power, CCTV systems, security alarms, fire alarms, electrical locks, air-conditioning, elevators and water pipes.
The researchers had discovered the Google management system on a search engine for internet-connected devices known as Shodan.
Google Australia thanked the researchers for alerting it, and "took appropriate action to resolve this issue".

Dams

Hackers almost gained control of the floodgates at Bowman Avenue Dam, near New York City, in 2013.
It is believed the only reason they did not gain full control was because the dam had been manually disconnected for routine maintenance.
Former government officials lay the blame for the attack on Iran, but details remain scarce as the incident remains classified.

TV stations

The French TV station TV5Monde fell victim to a sophisticated cyber attack that brought down 12 channels for almost a whole day in April 2015.
Jihadist hackers were initially suspected to be the culprit as the TV5Monde website was defaced with Islamic State propaganda.
However, cyber security experts later realised the hacker group used Russian code.

ATMs

New Zealand hacker Barnaby Jack came to fame in 2010 after demonstrating how to hack into automatic teller machines, causing them to spew out wads of notes.
One of the vulnerabilities Jack demonstrated was in the remote monitoring feature, which in some models of ATMs is turned on by default.
It was through this flaw in the ATMs' software that he uploaded a program designed to infect the machine in secret.
The program would then be activated when someone entered a touch-sequence on the ATM's keypad, causing bills to fly out of the machine.

Traffic lights

In 2014, researchers demonstrated how they could remotely control a system of 100 intersections' traffic lights in an unnamed city in Michigan.
Under the supervision of the government road agency, experts from the University of Michigan showed how the traffic lights used wireless radio to communicate data within a central network.
It was through this wireless radio system that they discovered they could send commands to any intersection and control the lights at will.
Planes?

Security researcher Chris Robert is subject to an ongoing FBI investigation after claiming to have hacked a plane mid-flight via its entertainment console.
He claims to have made the passenger jet fly in a sideways movement.
However, the jury remains out as to whether his claims are correct, especially if the flight crew failed to notice any abnormality.