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October 17, 2016 12:00 am

Cyber Attackers Have Successfully Hit A Nuclear Power Plant And A Lab

Slashdot reader zootsewt1 quotes a rundown by Security Taco of two unrelated breaches at nuclear-related facilities that were recently disclosed -- one "disruptive" and the other involving the remote theft of documents: Director Yukiya Amano from the IAEA disclosed that a nuclear power generation facility came under cyber attack within the last few years. He declined to state which specific nuclear facility was involved. Mr. Amano advised that "This issue of cyber attacks on nuclear-related facilities or activities should be taken very seriously. We never know if we know everything or if it's the tip of the iceberg." In a separate incident, a nuclear lab in the University of Toyama in Japan conducting research on tritium (used in nuclear power plants), also came under cyber attack earlier this year. The attacker appears to have been able to exfiltrate large large amounts of data, some of which was related to the Fukushima clean-up. The Reuters article lists other data breaches and malware infections at nuclear sites over the years, and notes that the IAEA director "also cited a case in which an individual tried to smuggle a small amount of highly enriched uranium about four years ago that could have been used to build a so-called 'dirty bomb'." At the isotope research center at the University of Toyama, the attacker reportedly compressed more than 1,000 files to make them easier to transmit.

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