Labs Live: Operational Technology

For this Labs Live, I'll be guiding you through the ICS Vulnerabilities: Protocol Injection lab. 

ICS Vulnerabilities: Protocol Injection
Difficulty 6 - Practical

Incident responders and SOC analysts working in OT and ICS environments must know the unique challenges of protocol attacks targeting these systems. These attacks exploit the inherent vulnerabilities in various OT and ICS communication protocols, with potentially disastrous consequences for the target organization. This lab provides an overview of protocol attacks, discusses specific examples of such attacks, and outlines detection and prevention strategies.

Understanding these attacks is critically important because many of the industrial protocols in use today, such as Modbus, DNP3, and S7Comm, were designed decades ago, long before cybersecurity was a concern. As a result, these protocols often lack basic security features like encryption and authentication, making them especially vulnerable to manipulation.

Protocol injection attacks can allow adversaries to issue unauthorized commands to industrial devices, change setpoints, toggle coils or relays, and ultimately alter physical processes. In real-world environments, this could mean anything from stopping a production line to causing unsafe operating conditions, damaging equipment, or even endangering human lives. Because these protocols typically assume trust in the network, even a limited foothold can give attackers significant control over critical infrastructure.

Throughout this Labs Live session, I'll highlight the nuances and impacts of these attacks and explain why they might not be as straightforward as they seem.