Electronic attack on the U.S. gas lines

Interior Ministry warned the U.S. that an attack targeted a sophisticated electronically natural gas pipeline was being prepared the U.S. has for several months, raising new fears about the vulnerability of critical infrastructure in the country to the risk of hackers computers. She told the Financial Times to what the Panel on industrial control systems in the ministry of that recently identified a single campaign behind the multi-intrusion for several different companies pipelines since December / December.

The Panel issued on warnings and held meetings with the operators of oil pipelines and gas to teach them how to monitor signs of the attack and said that he was in constant contact with the bodies that were damaged for the preparation of plans to ease the tension and remove the threat and to strengthen networks against infection again.

No information was available about the source or motive for the attack, but industry experts pointed to two possibilities: an attempt to control the gas pipelines to disrupt supply, or attempt to access the information on the flows to be used in commodity trading in the stock market.

It is noteworthy that the warning came from the original company had noticed a fake e-mails sent to staff. This attack uses what is known in the term computer security as "phishing", is to use Facebook or other sources to gather information on the staff of a company and then try to entrap them to disclose information or click on the links Mvirsh (including viruses) to send e-mails disguised claiming to be from colleagues the work.

The team said that additional details about the attack that has been circulating in the warning directed to the operators of pipelines, is sensitive and can not be disseminated via public channels or unsafe.

Said Cathy Landry of the Association of Interstate Natural Gas in America, a group operators of pipelines, said, "This Alttaflat to the poll, but we do not know whether they were trying to access control systems, pipelines or information to the company."

It is worth mentioning that the sensitivity of the computer systems of the energy industry has been subjected to two major incidents in the past two years.

Has tracked the campaign of piracy known as "Dragon Knight" title in China and commercially sensitive data collected for oil and gas fields and other information from energy companies. Was highlighted in the report of the attack on the U.S. Congress and the intelligence agencies of major U.S. last year, which warned that "industrial espionage and foreign economic against the United States represents a major threat and the growing prosperity and security of the country."

The second incident is the Stuxnet virus in 2010 that caused a major disruption to Iran's nuclear program.

The newspaper pointed out that the threat of attacks on IT systems has led U.S. authorities to double their security in recent years, including the formation of the Panel on the security of control systems industry against cyber attacks to protect the infrastructure is sensitive, such as wireless networks and the supply of food, water, nuclear reactors and oil pipelines and gas.

The director of Central Intelligence at the time Leon Panetta had warned last year that the attack mail can be "the next Pearl Harbor."