Russian hacks also took a peek at US civil aviation during 2017 attacks

Bloomberg:
Russian hackers penetrated the U.S. civilian aviation system early in 2017 as part of the broad assault on the nation’s sensitive infrastructure, according to a consortium designed to protect the industry.

The attack had limited impact and the industry has taken steps to prevent a repeat of the intrusion, according to Jeff Troy, executive director of the Aviation Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said Friday. Troy wouldn’t elaborate on the nature of the breach and declined to identify specific companies or the affected sector.

“It hit a part of our very broad membership,” Troy said. The intrusion wasn’t something that would directly harm airplanes or airlines, he said. “But I did see that this impacted some companies that are in the aviation sector.”

Troy’s comments confirmed the impact on aviation from a Russian attack that was described more broadly on Thursday by U.S. government officials. The assault was aimed at the electric grid, water processing plants and other targets, the officials said, in the first formal confirmation of Russia’s role. The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation identified aviation as one of the targets, but didn’t provide specifics.
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Like the attacks on electric plants, these look like probing attacks designed to find vulnerabilities to use for more substantive attacks in the future in the event of open hostilities between the US and Russia.  They are a warning of what to be expected should such hostilities occur.

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