Munish Walther-Puri of the Center for Global Affairs at New York University joins the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss a homegrown severity scale for critical infrastructure cybersecurity incidents. The Infrastructure Cyber Incident Scale, or INCI Scale, brings a Richter-Scale-like criticality index to incidents based on the intensity, magnitude, and duration of an event. Walther-Puri unveiled the scale at the S4 Conference in Tampa. 

Brian Foster, Senior Advisor for Grid Security at Southern California Edison, joins the Nexus Podcast to discuss a presentation he gave at the S4 Conference called . 

Foster covers the impending risk and host of exposures expected as smart meters and other similar devices are centrally managed online. This scenario gives attackers the ability to attack devices at scale and potentially cause catastrophic damage. 

Listen to every episode of the Nexus Podcast here. 

Claroty Team82 researcher Noam Moshe joins the Nexus Podcast to talk about Team82’s research into Unitronics Vision series integrated HMI/PLC devices. The OT devices were exploited last year in attacks against water treatment facilities in the U.S. and Israel. Team82 researched the security of these devices and developed a pair of tools that allowed them to extract forensic information from the PLCs. Both tools were released to open source on Team82’s Github page.
Moshe also presented this research today at the Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas. 

Read Team82’s research blog here.
Download the forensics tools here.
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts 

Alexander Antukh, CISO of AboitizPower in the Philippines, the country's largest power and renewable energy provider, joins the Nexus Podcast to discuss cyber risk quantification (CRQ). CRQ is a popular framework used to assess the financial impact of a cybersecurity threat on an organization. Antukh is an advocate of CRQ, and discusses his approach to using it to predict risk in his organization, what level of organizational maturity is required for this approach to succeed, and how it's being applied in operational technology (OT) environments.
 
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Vincente Diaz, Threat Intelligence Strategist on Google’s VirusTotal team and formerly the EU director of Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research & Analysis Team, joins the Nexus Podcast to discuss how artificial intelligence and machine learning is an integral part of what VirusTotal is doing around malware analysis. Vincente describes the advantages these advanced technologies bring to malware analysis, in particular how it cuts down analysis time, and improves exploit detection. 
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Ahmik Hindman, Senior Network and Security Solution Consultant at Rockwell Automation, joins the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss the challenges and success stories he's experienced in patching operational technology equipment and industrial control systems. Hindman has been at Rockwell Automation for 28 years and has expansive experience with customers solving these complex cybersecurity issues. Hindman shares some of the frameworks, tools, and approaches he's worked with, and how convergence and other recent trends have changed how organizations handle vulnerabilities. 
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Dr. Bilyana Lilly,  an expert on geopolitics and Russia’s codification of information warfare as a strategy, says that the war in Ukraine has only temporarily delayed Russia’s activity against the West in cyberspace. On this episode of the Nexus podcast, she reinforces the idea that despite the fact that Russia is operating under severe resource constraints, CISOs should be preparing for the inevitable. 

“I think it’s important to identify the conditions and the constraints that currently the Russian government is currently experiencing. Because once these constraints are lifted then I think we’ll see an increase in cyber activity, which gives us some time to prepare,” Lilly said. “That’s what I think we should be doing right now. I think we shouldn’t be letting our guard down because I think those attacks are coming.”
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Bishop Fox CEO and Cofounder Vinnie Liu joins the Nexus Podcast to discuss his team's role during security incidents in conducting offensive security testing alongside incident response activities. In healthcare environments where ransomware is the leading threat, red-teams and other offensive security specialists are called in, Liu said, to ensure that secondary attack vectors cannot be leveraged by attackers to maintain persistence inside an organization. 
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Protect AI Chief Information Security Officer Diana Kelley joins the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss the intricacies of securing machine learning and artificial intelligence use inside the enterprise. She also explains the concept of MLSecOps and how it compares and contrasts to DevOps used in application development. 
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Jennifer Minella, founder and principal advisor of Viszen Security,  joins the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss her experiences advising organizations on operational technology implementations, risk management, and succeeding at IT/OT convergence. This episode was recorded during RSA Conference where Jennifer and Bryson Bort gave a talk on convergence from the perspectives of a defender of industrial networks, and from the viewpoint of an offensive security specialist. 
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Charles Blauner, Team8 operating partner and CISO in residence, joins the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss the rapid changes in responsibilities and liability risks facing today's chief information security officers. Blauner, former CISO at JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank, describes how, for example, the new SEC rules around disclosures and incidents, along with legal action against high-profile CISOs of public companies, have some security leaders re-thinking how they operate and negotiate within their roles. He also discusses whether enterprises should brace for an exodus of those in the CISO chair today. 
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Cybersecurity pioneer Mikko Hypponen joins the Claroty Nexus live at the RSA Conference to discuss a decade of ransomware attacks against corporate networks. Hypponen is Chief Research Officer at WithSecure, the former F-Secure for Business. He has observed and analyzed malware from its infancy when it was a merely a means of disruption and attention-seeking to today's enormously profitable ransomware services and gangs . 
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Matthew Rogers, ICS Cybersecurity Strategy & R&D Lead at the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) joins the Nexus Podcast to discuss the agency's latest publication: “Secure by Demand: Priority Considerations for Operational Technology Owners and Operators when Selecting Digital Products.”

This guide features 12 cybersecurity recommendations that OT owners and operators should be looking for during procurement cycles with automation and control system vendors.

Read Claroty's blog on the guide.
Listen to every episode of the Nexus Podcast here. 

Former NSA Director Adm. Michael S. Rogers (Ret. USN) joins the Claroty Nexus Podcast live from RSA Conference in San Francisco to discuss the current geopolitical climate, its impact on chief information security officers, and how they can and should response. Rogers discusses how the doctrines of adversaries are changing and that U.S. critical infrastructure is increasingly in the crosshairs. He also brings his experience and delivers practical advice for CISOs who are not only dealing with external adversaries but also potential legal liability in the event of breaches.
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Abel Archundia, chief technology officer and global head of advisory for Istari, joins the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss the nature of complexity, technical debt, and regulation, and how it influences risk decisions in critical infrastructure environments. He explains the challenges complexity brings to manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and other CI sectors, and how owners and operators may feel outmatched by technical debt. 
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Adam Gluck, founder and CEO of Copia Automation, joins the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss the need for DevOps within industrial automation. DevOps practices are popping up more frequently in these environments, but there are still hurdles and challenges for developers and engineers to overcome. Adam covers those, and explains how DevOps can improve disaster recovery, lessen the introduction of vulnerabilities in new code, and mitigate risk by being proactive about reviewing code changes as they happen rather than later in the development lifecycle.
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Greg Garcia, the executive director of the Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Council’s Cybersecurity Working Group, joins the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss the Change Healthcare ransomware attack and what can be done from a policy perspective to minimize the impact of such attacks in the future.

Garcia has had a long career on the policy side of cybersecurity, and was the first presidentially appointed Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security. In this episode, he discusses where organizations are in terms of recovery from the impacts of the attack, longterm impacts on the healthcare sector, and how the HSCC's recently published five-year strategic plan for organizations in the crosshairs. 

For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Ryan Pickren, a Ph.D. student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, joins the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss a recently published research paper that explains a new web-based malware attack against programmable logic controllers. Pickren, the lead author, along with colleagues Tohid Shekari, Saman Zonouz, and Raheem Beyah, explains how embedded webservers inside modern PLCs can be attacked to give remote attackers full control over the device.
Check out their paper: “Compromising Industrial Processes Using Web-Based Programmable Logic Controller Malware”

For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Hormel Foods Chief Information Security Officer and Director of Information Security and Compliance Mike Rogers joins the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss why it's so important for CISO's to understand their personal liability during cybersecurity incidents. New regulations, including the SEC's cybersecurity rules, are driving this need for security leadership to evaluate to manage their personal exposure. Rogers provides his perspective on the SEC rules, how incident response is changing, and the ambiguity around exactly what constitutes a "material" incident.
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Noam Moshe of Claroty Team82 is back to answer more listener questions about OT vulnerability research, threats and risks to OT networks and IoT devices, and the best mitigation and remediation strategies for defenders.
This is a follow-up podcast to an episode we recorded in December answering listener questions. You can listen to that episode here.

For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Phlow Corp., CIO Juan Piacquadio joins the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss the application of Industry 4.0 to pharmaceuticals, also known as Pharma 4.0. The industry is quickly adopting advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, digital twins, and augmented reality to enhance the development of medicine and improve patient care. Along with that expansion of capabilities comes a wider attack surface, and Piacquadio spends a good deal of time explaining not only the threat landscape he envisions, but also how giant pharmaceuticals, the supply chain, and security providers must respond.
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

David Elfering, CISO at Carrix and former security and risk executive at Marsh, is back for another episode of the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss cyber liability insurance. Elfering has extensive experience working not only as an enterprise cybersecurity executive, but also with one of the world's leading insurance carriers. Listen as he brings insight on that perspective, how carrier cybersecurity requirements align with risk reduction, red flags that can imperil coverage or claims, and how cyber insurance providers are looking at geopolitical conflict. 
For more, visit nexusconnect.io/podcasts

Team82 researchers Sharon Brizinov and Noam Moshe join the Claroty podcast for a special episode where they answer questions submitted by users. This Ask-Me-Anything style of podcast covers the team's OT and IoT vulnerability research process, resources for experienced and beginner vulnerability researchers, and insights from their point of view on the threat landscape for cyber-physical systems. 

Claroty Team82 researcher Noam Moshe joins the Nexus Podcast to discuss the IOCONTROL malware used by an Iranian APT actor known as the CyberAv3ngers to target civilian critical infrastructure in the U.S. and Israel. The malware acts as a Linux-based backdoor and has a modular configuration that can be adapted for IoT, OT, and SCADA devices.
Read Team82's research blog: "Inside a New OT/IoT Cyberweapon: IONCONTROL"
Listen and subscribe to the Nexus Podcast here.

Nathan Brubaker, Mandiant and Google Cloud Head of Emerging Threats and Analytics, joins the Claroty Nexus podcast for a timely discussion on his team’s report published this week on the Sandworm APT’s activity in Ukraine.

Sandworm leveraged a new TTP—Living off the Land techniques—to target a Ukrainian energy company in October 2022 to cause a power outage. That outage also coincided with missile attacks by Russia against critical infrastructure in Ukraine.
 
Read Mandiant's Sandworm paper here. 

Don Weber of Cutaway Security joins the Nexus podcast to discuss a trend in control environments where asset operators and engineers keep trained cybersecurity professionals at arm's length, citing safety concerns. As more control systems are connected and managed online, it's critical for certified security professionals to be included in overall safety and reliability activities. Otherwise new risk and vulnerabilities are likely to be introduced.
Weber also discusses a new methodology for assessing implementation vulnerabilities within industrial automation and control systems. Read more about IACS STAR:
 IACS STAR Calculator
IACS STAR GitHub

Misha Belisle and Blaine Jeffries of MITRE join the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss  Caldera for OT, a new set of operational technology plugins for the open source core Caldera adversary emulation platform. Caldera for OT supports the Modbus, BACnet, and dnp protocols, and Belisle and Jeffries hope to add future support for additional protocols. Red and purple teams may use Caldera for OT for adversary emulation in order to understand the exposure of these protocols to attacks.
Caldera for OT is available here.

Retired Pfizer Chief Information Security Officer Jim Labonty joins the podcast to discuss the operational technology (OT) security stack, and how it differs from IT. This episode provides especially important for the growing number of security leaders who are newly responsible for OT cybersecurity and the safety of cyber-physical systems. 

Labonty also shares his experience during his time at Pfizer in securing the development of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine, and how not only security of the manufacturing process took top priority, but also supply chain security. 

Stephen Reynolds, a partner at the law firm of McDermott, Will, and Emery, joins the Nexus Podcast to discuss some of the concerns and questions CISOs and other security executives may have about their personal liability and exposure during breach investigations. The short of it: Don’t panic, but don’t be unprepared either. In this case, preparation equates to having personal legal counsel available, and document everything during an incident.
Reynolds and Eli Lilly associate VP and assistant general counsel Nick Merker presented on this topic at Black Hat under the context of the case and conviction of former Uber CISO Joe Sullivan. Sullivan was convicted of obstruction of justice and misprision of a felony for his role in covering up a breach at Uber. 
Reynolds cautions that CISOs always remember that corporate counsel represent the company, and any attorney-client privilege is to the company and not the individual. He also reminds leaders to document the facts and information available at the time key decisions were made during an incident.

Team82’s extensive research into network attached storage devices and the ubiquitous OPC UA industrial protocol came to a head recently in Las Vegas with a pair of presentations at Black Hat USA and DEF CON disclosing vulnerabilities in Synology and Western Digital NAS cloud connections and the unveiling of a unique OPC UA exploit framework. 

In this episode of the Nexus podcast, researcher Noam Moshe explains how both research initiatives came to be, the implications of each for users, and how the respective ecosystems have been made safer.

Read our Synology research
Read our Western Digital research
Read about our OPC UA exploit framework
Download the framework

In this episode of the Nexus podcast, Bishop Fox researchers Dan Petro and David Vargas explain their research into the Open Supervised Device Protocol (OSDP), meant to bring encryption to badge readers and controllers providing physical access controls at secure facilities.
Petro and Vargas explain a number of protocol weaknesses and vulnerabilities that defeat OSDP's promise of encryption and security. Through the attacks they describe, they're able carry out—among others—replay or downgrade attacks, which are enabled by severe key exchange vulnerabilities or weakened crypto keys as described in the protocol.
Petro and Vargas unveiled this research during a presentation at Black Hat USA in Las Vegas. 

Jennifer Lyn Walker, Director of Infrastructure Cyber Defense for the WaterISAC, joins the Nexus podcast to discuss the state of cybersecurity within the water and wastewater critical infrastructure sector. Walker explains where the cybersecurity technology, funding, and skills  gaps currently exist among smaller—and larger—water providers. She also covers recent improvements from water utilities, and what, in an ideal world, the cybersecurity industry and government could do to help. 

Kathleen Moriarty, Chief Technology Officer of the Center for Internet Security (CIS) joins the Nexus podcast to discuss CIS' recently published IoT Embedded Security Guidance. The document walks vendors, developers, DevOps professionals through the most commonly used IoT  protocols and analyzes them from a security perspective. The aim is to help vendors and developers with this selection process and assist with building security in at the protocol level.
Download the guidance here.

Walter Risi, Global OT Lead and the Technology and Cyber Security Consulting leader at KPMG in Argentina, joins the Nexus podcast to discuss the CISO's journey from IT to OT. 
Risi explains what's driving this convergence of security disciplines, and the challenges security leaders are facing across industries. You'll also learn why resilience should be the goal of enterprise security programs, the tools and experience necessary to successfully converge IT and OT security operations, and the importance of bringing cybersecurity awareness and experience to OT engineers and operators. 

Claroty Team82's Noam Moshe and Tomer Goldschmidt join the Nexus Podcast to discuss the research team's latest publication on 10 vulnerabilities discovered in Ruijie Networks' Reyee OS cloud platform. A chain of these vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to remotely execute code on any device connected to the Ruijie cloud. Team82 also developed an attack they call Open Sesame which allows an attacker in proximity of a Ruijie device to use leaked device information and access the internal network.

You can find the research here on Team82's website.
Listen and subscribe to the Nexus Podcast here.

Claroty Team82's Noam Moshe joins the Nexus podcast to discuss a recent research collaboration with OTORIO looking at Teltonika's 4G industrial routers and cloud management platforms. Eight vulnerabilities were uncovered and patched by the vendor in a recent update. Moshe discusses the vulnerabilities, attack vectors involved, and the state of secure development for IIoT routers.
Read Team82's report: "Triple Threat: Breaking Teltonika Routers Three Ways"

Mandiant Chief Technology Officer Charles Carmakal joins the Claroty Nexus podcast to discuss real-world threats to healthcare organizations. Mandiant has a unique vantage point as an incident response team involved in many high-profile cyberattacks. Based on that insight, Carmakal is able to comment on the conventional and opportunistic attacks healthcare delivery organizations and providers are dealing with. Some of those include multifaceted extortion as well as intellectual property theft. He also discusses whether attacks targeting medical devices are a reality. 

Lorrie Cranor, Director and Bosch Distinguished Professor in Security and Privacy Technologies at Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab, joins the Nexus podcast to discuss an IoT security and privacy label initiative under way at CyLab. The labels are meant not only to help consumers make informed buying decisions, but also to nudge vendors and manufacturers closer toward delivering secure smart devices to market. 

Skip Sorrels, director of cybersecurity at Ascension Technologies, which oversees the technology needs for Ascension Healthcare, one of the country’s biggest non-profit healthcare providers, joins the Nexus podcast to discuss the 405(d) Task Group's  Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices (HICP).

The HICP identifies top cybersecurity threats to the healthcare industry, and 10 blocking-and-tackling mitigation practices and sub-practices aimed at not only larger, more resourced organizations, but also smaller healthcare providers.

Dave Elfering, senior vice president at Marsh, a global insurance broker and risk management company, joins the Nexus podcast to discuss the current state of cyber insurance. A longtime figure in information security, Elfering explains the current volatility around coverage, premiums, and exclusions. He goes deep into what can sometimes be contentious discussions about qualifications and controls that must be implemented in order to be eligible for coverage, in addition to policy exclusions. 

Team82 researcher Vera Mens joins the Nexus podcast to discuss her research that uncovered 13 vulnerabilities in the popular Akuvox E11 smart intercoms. These devices are used to control access to offices, residential, and commercial establishments. The vulnerabilities range in severity, and pose serious privacy implications for users. Vera will discuss her research and a challenging disclosure withe vendor that began 15 months ago. 
Read Team82's technical report on this research here.
Read Team82's blog here. 

Adm. Mike Rogers, USN (Ret.) joins the Nexus podcast to discuss the recently released National Cybersecurity Strategy, the first such strategy from the Biden administration. The strategy codifies many of the cyber-physical systems security initiatives the White House has produced since 2021 in the aftermath of the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack. Adm. Rogers shares his past contributions to previous strategies, and provides insight into the document's five pillars and how they will impact critical infrastructure security in the near term. 

Katherine Gronberg, head of government services at cybersecurity venture capital firm NightDragon, joins the Nexus Podcast to discuss what's driving the federal government's renewed interest and investment in OT and IoT cybersecurity. Katherine brings insight from her unique perspective on these issues, especially as it pertains to upcoming requirements facing asset owners and operators, how vendors must respond to mandates put out by the White House, and what might be in the impending national cybersecurity strategy from the  White House Office of the National Cyber Director. 

Claroty Team82 researcher Noam Moshe joins the podcast to discuss his recent research and development of a generic bypass of leading vendors' web application firewalls.
This research was presented at Black Hat Europe and on the Team82 blog.  The technique involves prepending JSON syntax to a SQL injection payload. Prior to this research, WAFs were blind to JSON syntax and would not flag these payloads as malicious. 
All of the leading vendors have since added JSON support to their SQL injection processes. 

Claroty Team82 Director of Research Sharon Brizinov joins the podcast to discuss the recent Pwn2Own Toronto event. Brizinov was successful in three categories at the event, finding and exploiting zero day vulnerabilities in two network-attached storage devices and a popular router. 

In this episode, Brizinov explains his preparation for the contest, and compares and contrasts hacking industrial control systems and internet of things connected devices. 

Volexity founder Steven Adair joins the Claroty Nexus Podcast to discuss the Nearest Neighbor Attack, a unique attack carried out by Russia's APT 28 against a high-value target in an attempt to gain intelligence on Ukraine prior to the start of the war in February 2022.

APT 28 was able to compromise the Wi-Fi network of its target without being in physical proximity of it. They did so by remotely compromising neighboring organizations, accessing their Wi-Fi networks—creating a daisy-chain of breaches and compromises—until they were able to reach their target.

Volexity's blog contains additional technical details.

Listen to every episode of the Nexus Podcast here. 

Joe Slowik, threat intelligence and detections lead at Gigamon, joins the podcast to discuss the XENOTIME hacking group, the entity believed to be responsible for the 2017 Triton attack.
Triton was deployed within a petrochemical facility in Saudi Arabia and triggered a fault in the Schneider Electric Triconex Safety Instrumented Systems that initiated a shutdown of the plant. The Triton intrusion and malware deployment could have been much worse, resulting in harmful physical consequences and loss of life.
Slowik's recent Virus Bulletin paper and presentation describes the complex ecosystem behind XENOTIME, its connections to Russian intelligence, and the tooling it built enabling the Triton attack and deployment.
One question does linger: Who wrote Triton?  

Team82's Noam Moshe, one of the researchers involved in developing the EvilPLC attack, discusses the technique of using a weaponized programmable logic controller to compromise an engineer's workstation and gain access to other PLCs on the OT network.

Read more about the EvilPLC technique
Download Team82's paper on EvilPLC

Sarah Fluchs, CTO at Admeritia, joins the Aperture podcast to discuss the Top 20 Secure PLC Coding Practices List. Written for engineers by engineers, the list provides recommendations that can be used to securely design and code programmable logic controllers (PLCs).
The first iteration of the list was published in 2021, and since then, its core group of maintainers has grown to 75 and more than 1,000 engineers and experts registered as contributors.
The list has been prominent referenced in training materials and other resources, including the NATO guide for protecting automation and control systems, and MITRE is considering integrating the list into its CWE database.
In this episode, Sarah discusses secure PLC programming, how the list was developed, and how it should be used by engineers and security practitioners. 

Vergle Gipson, senior advisor, at Idaho National Lab's Cybercore Integration Center, joins the podcast to discuss cyber-informed engineering and the maturing discipline of operational technology (OT) cybersecurity. 
Gipson recently testified before a House Committee on Homeland Security about the need to secure industrial control systems against cyberattacks. One of the recommendations he suggested to the committee was the need for cyber-informed engineering, which has parallels to secure software development for IT.  Gipson discusses CIE and the need for cyber-physical system security and critical function assurance.