NEW version of the Famous Whitepaper Requirements for Secure Control and Telecommunication Systems

The Austrian, German, and Swiss Utilities have published (with the support of Dr. Stephan Beirer and Marl Joos (GAI NetConsult GmbH, Berlin/Germany)) the Version 3.0 of the famous 

Whitepaper Requirements for Secure Control and Telecommunication Systems

The English version (pdf, 88 pages) could be downloaded HERE.

Die deutsche Version (pdf, 92 Seiten) kann HIER heruntergeladen werden.

It is highly recommended to read, understand, and implement the recommendations! They reflect the latest experiences and need in our highly interconnected electric power world!

Today I will focus on two issues: the first is discussed in the Whitepaper, the second is discussed in a paper from AXPRO in Switzerland.

The Whitepaper says on page 46 (bzw Seite 47 in der deutschen Version):

"In line with the given technical capabilities, standardised IEC protocols should be used across the board. The private range of these communication protocols should only be used where necessary for technological reasons. Without additional measures, the standard protocols IEC 60870-5-101/104 and IEC 61850 offer no secure integrity protection, authentication or encryption. In such cases, the available extensions according to IEC 62351 should be used. Potential limitations, e.g. in terms of performance and error diagnostics as well as the necessary key management infrastructure and processes should be considered.

For communication across zone boundaries, protocol breaks should be provided, e.g. through application layer gateways or by converting to a different protocol, to reduce potential vulnerabilities and weak points."

I fully agree with this last sentence. This brings me to the second issue: 

The Swiss utility AXPRO published a great paper with the title: OT-Security im Unterwerk  ... means in substations ... the paper is in English. You can download it HERE.

On page 3 you can find this:

Geräte diversifizieren

"Die klassischen Ansätze der Literatur geben einen Überblick über Lösungen. Dies beginnt bei gängigen Konzepten zur Ersatzteilhaltung und setzt sich bei der technischen Redundanz von Komponenten fort. Die zusätzlichen Komponenten halten den Betrieb bei einem Ausfall aufrecht – zumindest einen Minimalbetrieb. Die eingesetzten Geräte und Systeme können zudem mit unter-schiedlichen Komponenten diversifiziert werden, beispielsweise durch Geräte unterschiedlicher Hersteller, Gerätefamilien mit signifikanten Unterschieden sowie Kommunikationsvarianten. Eine einzelne Schwachstelle kann somit nie die Funktion des Gesamtsystems gefährden. Die Diversität stellt eine Hürde dar, die ein Angreifer überwinden muss. Allerdings muss auch beachtet und akzeptiert werden, dass durch eine grössere Diversität ein Mehraufwand für den Betrieb und somit zusätzliche Kosten entstehen."

They are obviously following the recommendation of the Whitepaper!! Thanks. The statement in the last sentence is important to understand: The implementation and application of many security measures needs peopleware and reasonable budgets!

I have discussed peopleware many times for years ... it seems to be more important than ever ... see also my latest discussion on people ...

Be aware: The most secure communication is the one that is not implemented or implemented but not in use!

Looking for an Open Source Multi Protocol Gateway for IEC 104, TASE.2/ICCP, IEC 61850, OPC-UA ...?

The standards IEC 60870-5-104, IEC 60870-6 (TASE.2, ICCP), IEC 61850, OPC-UA and other (often legacy solutions) are crucial for the power delivery systems all over!

Therefore the ability to translate from one protocol to another is a key feature for every TSO (Transmission System Operator). As the needs are growing and the number of use cases are flourishing (e.g. RTE needs thousands of instances of MPG (Multi Protocol Gateways), they are incented to look for a highly cost effective solution. On this observation, Swissgrid and RTE decided to take over that challenge by initiating a Proof of Concept on an open source basis - according to a news published at LinkedIn the other day.

Title: "First step toward an Open Source multiprotocol Gateway initiated by Swissgrid and RTE"

Click HERE for more information posted at LinkedIn.

Sebastien HENRY (Directeur SI & Télécommunications chez RTE Réseau de Transport d'Electricité) said: "RTE is committed to invest in open source for the development of an ecosystem of IT solutions for the energy sector. I am very confident in the fact that with the multiprotocol gateway, a small piece of software widely needed in our infrastructures, will demonstrate this strategy worth being followed."

Next week: IXXAT Smart Grid Gateways at IEC 61850 Global 2019 in London, UK

IXXAT (HMS) will be available at the conference to demonstrate you the latest gateway family supporting IEC 61850, IEC 60870-5-104, Profibus, ProfiNet, Ethernet/IP, M-Bus, ...

IEC 61850 Global 2019
London, UK
Oct 14, 2019, 02:00 AM - Oct 19, 2019, 02:00 AM

Drawing together 150+ IEC 61850 specialists and implementation leaders, this end-user-driven programme focuses on achieving multi-vendor, multi-edition interoperability within the substation and across the wider smart grid.

Click HERE for more details on the event.

New IIoT gateways from HMS allow industrial equipment to communicate with smart grids ...

Click HERE for more details to solve smart grid information models and communications.

Note that the gateway will come with MQTT as well ...

Click HERE for the Gateway with MQTT support.

IEC 61850 For Monitoring Data - Private or Standard?

One of the most crucial issues in the management of energy systems is: HOW TO share or exchange useful information generated by a myriad of sensors and applications needed by hundreds of applications?

Lets assume that lakes of information are generated every second. Usually this information is stored in silos of vendors specific solutions and communicated using one or more vendor specific communication solutions ... as shown in the following sketch drawn by our grandson Jan Oliver:



The expectations to apply IEC 61850 are high! BUT quite often vendors argue, that it is easier to use their private solutions - faster and saves time and costs! This may be true for the first phase of a project - but in the long run and in the view of the life time cost it may be completely opposite.

Three experts from Vattenfall DSO (Sweden; Vincent GLINIEWICZ, David EROL Anders JOHNSSON) have reported at the CIRED conference 2019-06 in Madrid (Spain) from an implementation of a pilot project using IEC 61850 and CIM  with the title:

LEVERAGING INDUSTRY STANDARDS TO BUILD AN ARCHITECTURE FOR ASSET MANAGEMENT AND PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE

Excerpt from the paper:

"... However the data unfortunately currently often remain unused and unshared outside of the substation or specific silos for various reasons, some technical (e.g. cyber security, system incompatibility), some and organizational (e.g. vendor lock-in, siloed applications and organizations).
Additionally, with an increasing number of use cases requiring access to information, there is a growing number of information flows needed not only between data sources and central level applications but also between these central level applications. Without an IT architecture that allows reuse of information flows, there are legitimate concerns that the opportunities that digitalization promises might be delayed and costly or even worse, not be achievable.
As a result, Vattenfall Eldistribution sees a standard based integration approach as a cost-effective approach that seems to offer in the long run low integration costs and more importantly a greater flexibility, going from supplier specific integrations to a more generic approach. ...

We would also like to highlight some of the deviations from the standards that were observed during this pilot:

The pilot made use of a REST API towards the real time data historian (RTDH in fig. 2), although there was no mention of REST in the 61968-100 standard. One could however expect, given the increasing popularity and use of RESTful services in most industries, that the standard will soon follow and that the mention will be added in a further edition on the standard.
The gateway used in the pilot was a prototype base on a technical report (IEC TR 61850-90-2) [Using IEC 61850 for communication between substations and control centres] which is not yet a standard. This might explain why there doesn’t seem yet to be a complete and robust 61850-90-2 compliant product on offer in the market. Another alternative considered for the pilot gateway was the use of IEC 61850/MMS towards the substation and the use of web services (either RESTful+ JSON or SOAP) to communicate northbound instead of the IEC 61850/MMS used in the pilot. SOA has indeed a robust and well developed architecture for distributed computing, and this should be leveraged. There however did not seem to be any products available on the market. This alternative will be explored in a coming pilot. ..."

The paper concludes:

"Although the pilot was made for a primary substation, the widespread use of the IEC 61850 standards series make the results of this pilot not only applicable for primary substations, but potentially also secondary substations and microgrid.
Following the successful pilot, the next step is to look at how to fully implement and verify the concepts in a real substation and to secure production grade components where prototypes have been used as well as test the architecture through other smart grid use cases."

Click HERE for the full paper.

I have run an UCA/IEC 61850 pilot project with Anders Johnsson some 20 years (!) ago:

Two reports out of this pilot project and other discussions have been published in 2002:

Wind Power Communication
Verification report and recommendation

Click HERE for the Report.

Wind Power Communication - Design & Implementation 
of Test Environment for IEC61850/UCA2

Click HERE for the Report.

Enjoy the reports.

By the way: It took some 20 years to understand that the mapping of IEC 61850 models and communication protocols to MMS (ISO 9506) should be extended by a much easier and simpler mapping to JSON and, e.g., MQTT or http ...

It is not too late for such an additional standardized mapping ... e.g., as IEC 61850-8-3.

It may take another 10 years before this becomes true! Hope it will happen a bit earlier!

Further reading on the subject see discussion of IEC 61850-8-1 versus 8-2 (by 2024-02-25: 4074 visits of the post since July 2019).

Other people have similar ideas and published the following paper:

International Electronical Committee (IEC) 61850
Mapping with Constrained Application Protocol
(CoAP) in Smart Grids Based European
Telecommunications Standard Institute
Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Environment

Beck IPC offers MQTT@CHIP in addition to IEC 61850 and other protocols

Beck IPC (Wetzlar, Germany, a subsidary of HMS) is known for their solutions on a single CHIP offering support for IEC 60870-5-104, IEC 61850, Modbus, CANBus, Profibus, Profinet, OPC UA, ... now offers MQTT@CHIP as an additional solution.



The MQTT can be configured on the WEB PLC like it is implemented for other protocols:



In the above example I have mapped a signal from an IEC 61850 Server the signal MMXU1.TotW.instMag.f to a MQTT message. This way you can tag the signal as a JSON Object!!

JSON Objekte:
{ „MMXU01.TotW.instMag.f“:  2325, „MMXU01.Hz.instMag.f“:  49.98 }

Message specification:



This way you can send MQTT messages with values from any other protocol or from the IEC 61850 client or server model. This way you can even map to/from GOOSE messages.

I have used the solution running on the IXXAT Smart Grid Gateway. The WEB PLC version 19.2 is required to run MQTT on the gateway.

Very well done!

Many IEC 61850 Projects Under Progress

37 new parts and parts under revision are under progress as listed in the following table:

As you can see here: IEC 61850 is a bit more than another protocol.

Other parts are published already (some of them are under revision - see above):
https://webstore.iec.ch/publication/6028



Unfortunately many "grey-hair experts" with a lot of experience regarding IEC 61850 have been retired and a lot of experience has been wasted ... politics cares more about wasting food than wasting "experience" good for human survival! It's really a pity when we take into account that the comprehensiveness and complexity of IEC 61850 is growing so fast ...

Smart Grid Interface Modul (SGIM) auf der Hannover Messe 2019

Vom 01. bis 05. April 2019 findet die Weltleitmesse der Industrie in Hannover statt.







beenergy SG zeigt eine interessante Neuheit:

Smart Grid Interface Modul (SGIM) für die Energieverteilung - 
unterstützt IEC 60870-5-104 und IEC 61850!

Die Sicherstellung der Verteilnetzfunktion  sowie kostenoptimierte strukturelle Anpassungen durch die Versorgungs-netzbetreiber erfordern ein fortlaufendes Messen und Überwachen der dynamischen Belastungen in den Verteilnetzen. Mit dem BeEnergy SG Smart Grid Interface Modul lassen sich in Verteilnetzen an neuralgischen Stellen einfach und kostengünstig Messpunkte realisieren.

Hier klicken und mehr Information finden.
Hier für eine Broschüre klicken





Treffen Sie die SGIM-Experten persönlich in Halle 13, Stand E81 (Efen GmbH).

Smart Grid Communication Challenges With IXXAT SG Gateways

Smart Grid communication challenges can easily be solved with IXXAT SG-gateways

New IIoT gateways from HMS allow industrial 
equipment to communicate with smart grids.

IXXAT SG-gateways...

• Enable easy remote control and management of electrical systems
• Support IEC 61850 client/server, GOOSE, proxy gateway, IEC 60870-5-104 client/server and VHPready
• Provide Modbus-TCP client/server and Modbus-RTU master/slave interfaces
• Enable SNMP, SNTP, and cloud connectivity
• Provide I/O, M-Bus, PROFIBUS, PROFINET and EtherNet/IP interfaces
• Are safe – firewall, OpenVPN & password protection
• Support IEC 60870-5-104 redundancy acc. edition 2 (Norwegian Convention)

Click HERE to enter the world of IEC protocols for power delivery systems

[EN, DE, FR, CN].
Hier klicken ... für ein Kurzvideo und weitere Informationen ... von Martin Matt, Produktmanager Energy Communication bei HMS Networks, über intelligente Smart-Grid-Gateways.

Difference between IEC 60870-5-104 and IEC 61850

There seems to be a growing interest to understand what the difference is between IEC 60870-5-104 and IEC 61850. There have been many discussions, complaints, and frustrations ... no wonder.Here is what I have answered to somebody this week:

Dear xxx,

I guess I got it ... you are analyzing the communication inside a station ... to the IEDs (protection, control, ...).

The IEC 60870-5-104 plus a lot of utility or project specific (signal) engineering will do the job – has done it for decades.

The engineering is the key issue when comparing the two standards … if you can compare them at all!!

IEC 61850 offers a lot more than 104 or DNP3 …

From a message overhead point of view, you can say, that both are more or less the same ... because they use both Ethernet and TCP/IP. There is no benefit to use one or the other.

It is likely that IED vendors will mainly focus on IEC 61850 ... and may get rid of 104 in the long run.

I have always said that utilities using 104 in all substations should continue to use it – until they build new substations or do major refurbishments. There is no need to replace a running 104 solution with IEC 61850 ...

Another issue is: To use GOOSE for interlocking … to get rid of copper … or use it for tripping … and use sampled values some time down the road.

Finally there is an issue with manpower: If the utility has senior experts in 104 close to retirement … they should wait until they have retired. Yes! I have seen many old engineers not willing to learn something completely new!!
Click HERE for a detailed comparison written by domain experts.
Hope that helps a bit more.
Best Regards,

Karlheinz

Smart Grid Interface Modul (SGIM) supports IEC 60870-5-104, DNP3, IEC 61850 and OPC UA

Smart Grid Interface Modul offered by BeEnergy (Pohlheim/Germany)

The Smart Grid Interface Module (SGIM) is a ready-to-use system to monitor measured electrical values in switch cabinets and cable distribution cabinets. The mechanical design of SGIM is in line with industrial standards and is especially meant to be installed in a 185mm busbar system.
SGIM is built from two main parts: the installation platform and the plug-in unit. The plug-in unit contains all necessary control, communication and measurement functions to provide measured data either to a cloud-based data management system or via standard IEC protocols like IEEE 1815 - DNP3, IEC 60870-5-104 and IEC 61850 as well as industrial protocols like OPC/UA.
The device includes a local web server for the visualisation of the acquired data, the configuration of drivers and communication protocols as well as an interface to the WEB-PLC editor.







Click HERE for more information (Data Sheet).
Click HERE to visit BeEnergy

New Smart Grid Controller with IEC 61850, IEC 61850-5-104, and DNP3

System Corp (Perth/Australia) offers a new very powerful Smart Grid Controller for applications in:

1. Secondary Substation Control
2. Transformer and Asset Management
3. Micro Grid Control and Automation
4. Data Gateway Application
5. IoT and Cloud Service Interfacing

Click HERE for more details.

HMS Networks AB takes over Beck IPC

HMS has taken over the German based company Beck IPC. Beck IPC has a range of products providing IEC 61850, IEC 60870-5, and DNP3 connectivity - I have reported about their products from time to time ... just search for Beck on the blog.

Click HERE for the HMS press release.

HMS (IXXAT) sells some of the Beck com.tom (as Gateways):

Click HERE for Beck com.tom products with above standards implemented.
Click HERE for HMS Gateway products with above standards implemented.

Are Devices Using IEC 61850 Vulnerable?

Devices that implement IEC 61850 may be vulnerable - depending on the measures (not) implemented to protect your SYSTEM! There are many layers of security that can be build into the system to make is less vulnerable. IEC 61850 needs special security measures to hide the semantics of the information being exchanged in a system.

IEC 61850 has well defined models for controlling switch gears: Logical Node CSWI.Pos for operating any kind of switchgears liek circuit breaker, dis-connector or earthing switches. If a client (SCADA, RTU, Proxy, ...) has "open" access to an IED, it could use the self-description and figure out which CSWI instances are available ... and could try to use MMS Write to open or close a switch gear. In a bad system design, this may work.

A high level of security would not (easily) allow other clients (except those that are designed to operate) to operate a switch gear.

Security measures have to be implemented to prevent misuse of the self-description. Even without the self-description, it may be possible that somebody gets access to the SCL file of the system to "read" the models from an XML file. As a consequence: XML files need to be secured as well ...!

You will find solutions for many of the known security problems in the standard series IEC 62351!

The definitions have to be implemented - the paper standards do not protect your systems!

A very new, comprehensive and up-to-date report on security has been published the other day:

THREAT INTELLIGENCE REPORT
CYBERATTACKS AGAINST
UKRAINIAN ICS

Click HERE for the report [pdf, 20 pages].

By the way, the report mentions IEC 60870-5-101/104, IEC 61850 and OPC UA.
Worth to read.

Drei IEC-61850-Hands-On-Trainingskurse in Deutsch in Karlsruhe (2017 und 2018)

Die NettedAutomation GmbH (Karlsruhe) bietet drei Termine für das aktuelle IEC61850-Hands-On-Training in Karlsruhe an:
05.-08. Dezember 2017 
14.-17. Mai 2018
04.-07. Dezember 2018

Diese unschlagbar günstigen Trainingskurse vermitteln über 30 Jahre Erfahrungen mit Informationsaustausch-Systemen basierend auf internationalen Normenreihen wir IEC 61850 (allgemeine Anwendungen in der Energietechnik, Schaltanlagen, Transport- und Verteilnetze, Wasserkraft, Kraft-Wärmekopplung, Speicher, ...), IEC 61400-25 (Wind), IEC 60870-5-10x (traditionelle Fernwirktechnik), IEC 61158 (Feldbus), IEC 62351 (Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik) und vielen anderen.

Planen Sie schon heute das entsprechende Budget für das Jahr 2018!

Clicken Sie HIER für Inhalte, Preise und Anmeldeinformationen.

Fuzzing Communication Protocols - Some Thoughts About a New Report

Have you heard about FUZZING?

Wikipedia explains:"Fuzzing or fuzz testing is an automated software testing technique that involves providing invalid, unexpected, or random data as inputs to a computer program. The program is then monitored for exceptions such as crashes, or failing built-in code assertions or for finding potential memory leaks. ..." Wow!

Is there any link to IEC 60870-5-104, OPC UA or IEC 61850? Yes there are people that have used the technique to test these and many other protocols.

The "State of Fuzzing 2017" report just published by SYNOPSIS (San Francisco) wants to make us belief that, e.g., the above mentioned protocols are weak and may crash easily. What?

The best is to read the report and my comments below. Other experts have commented similarly.

Click HERE to download the report.

Any kind of testing to improve IMPLEMENTATIONS of protocols is helpful. You can test implementations only – not the protocols or stacks per se.

One of the crucial questions I have with the fuzz testing report is: Which IMPLEMENTATION(s) did they test? Did they test 10 different or 100? Open source implementations only? New implementations or old? Or what?

Testing is always a good idea … more testing even a better approach. At the end of the day, customers have to pay for it (e.g., higher rates per kWh).

I would like to see more vendor-independent tests of any kind … but the user community must accept the higher costs. Are you ready to pay more? How much more would you accept to pay? 50%?

As long as vendors have the possibility to self-certify their products we will see more problems in the future.

Anyway: The best approach would be to use a different protocol for each IED … ;-)

What about testing the wide spectrum of application software? Not easy to automate … to fuzz.

You may have a protocol implementation without any error within one year … but an application that easily crashes … a holistic testing approach would be more helpful. IEC TC 57 WG 10 has discussed many times to define measures for functional tests … without any useful result so far. Utility experts from all over the world should contribute to that project – go and ask you manager to get approval for the next trips to New Orleans, Seoul, New York, Frankfurt, Brisbane, Tokyo, …  to contribute to functional testing. In case you do not attend – don’t complain in the future when IEDs crash …

The more complex an application is, the more likely it is that there will be serious and hard to find problems.

Crashing the protocol handler and application is one thing - what if they don’t crash but bad data gets through?

Conclusion
The report is a nice promotion for the fuzzing tools offered by Synopsis.
The last page states: "Synopsys offers the most comprehensive solution for building integrity—security and quality—into your SDLC and supply chain. We’ve united leading testing technologies, automated analysis, and experts to create a robust portfolio of products and services. ... our platform will help ensure the integrity of the applications that power your business."

Testing is very crucial and very complex. I hope that users of devices applying well known protocols in power system automation will soon better understand HOW important testing is - require various tests for devices they purchase and are willing to pay for it!
Start with an education phase as soon as possible - before it is too late.

Comparison of IEC 60870-5-10x, DNP3, and IEC 60870-6-TASE.2 with IEC 61850

In 2008 I published the 3rd version of the document:

Comparison of IEC 60870-5-101/-103/-104, DNP3, and IEC 60870-6-TASE.2 with IEC 61850

This is really the most downloaded document since then - and still in 2017!

Click HERE for getting a copy.

It is interesting that so many people are still interested to see the difference between IEC 61850 and the other IEC TC 57 standard series.

Now, in 2017 we have learned that IEC 61850 goes far beyond the other standard series.

The RTU standards like 104 or DNP3 are still in widespread use. Utilities are expecting that many vendors of RTUs will start to discontinue to supporting these standards.
That is one of many reasons why more utilities are starting to get involved in understanding IEC 61850.

IEC TC 88 Published Edition 2 Documents for the Series IEC 61400-25

IEC TC 88 has published the edition 2 of the following two parts of the series IEC 61400-25:

IEC 61400-25-4: Wind energy generation systems -
Part 25-4: Communications for monitoring and control of wind power plants -
Mapping to communication profile
The mappings specified in this part of IEC 61400-25 comprise:

•  SOAP-based web services,
•  OPC/XML-DA,
•  IEC 61850-8-1 MMS,
•  IEC 60870-5-104,
•  DNP3.

Click HERE for the Preview.

IEC 61400-25-6: Wind power generation systems -
Part 25-6: Communications for monitoring and control of wind power plants -
Logical node classes and data classes for condition monitoring

Click HERE for the Preview

Note that the mapping to MMS according to IEC 61850-8-1 is the most used communication protocol for applications in the Wind Power Industry.
The modeling approach and the models are now in general compatible with those defined in IEC 61850-7-x. This is a major step forward.
General gateway solutions for IEC 61850 could be used for wind energy generation systems to bridge from Profibus, ProfiNet, Modbus, CAN bus, ... to IEC 60870-5-104 or IEC 61850-8-1.

IXXAT (HMS) Offers New POWERFUL Smart Grid Gateways for IEC 61850, IEC 60870-5, Profibus and more

Under the IXXAT brand, HMS delivers connectivity solutions for embedded control, energy, safety and automotive testing.
The new and very powerful IIoT gateways from HMS allow industrial equipment to communicate with power grids based on IEC 60870-5-104 and IEC 61850. In addition they also include Modbus TCP Client/Server and Modbus RTU Master/Slave


IXXAT SG-gateways...

• enable easy remote control and management of electrical systems
• allow to log and display application data and energy consumption
• provide IEC 61850 client/server and IEC 60870-5-104 server support
• have in-built Modbus TCP Client/Server and Modbus RTU Master/Slave interfaces
• provide connectivity for CAN Bus, I/O, M-Bus, PROFIBUS, PROFINET and EtherNet/IP based devices

Click HERE for more details in English
Hier klicken für Details in Deutsch

Are Blackouts Knocking at the Doors of Substations?

Dear experts interested in secure power delivery systems,
You may have been informed yesterday about one of the latest developments in destroying the power delivery infrastructure: Industroyer.
What is Industroyer? It is "A new threat for industrial control systems" according to Anton Cherepanov (ESET):
"Win32/Industroyer is a sophisticated piece of malware designed to disrupt
the working processes of industrial control systems (ICS), specifically
industrial control systems used in electrical substations.
Those behind the Win32/Industroyer malware have a deep knowledge
and understanding of industrial control systems and, specifically, the
industrial protocols used in electric power systems. Moreover, it seems very
unlikely anyone could write and test such malware without access to the
specialized equipment used in the specific, targeted industrial environment.
Support for four different industrial control protocols, specified in the
standards listed below, has been implemented by the malware authors:
• IEC 60870-5-101 (aka IEC 101)
• IEC 60870-5-104 (aka IEC 104)
• IEC 61850
• OLE for Process Control Data Access (OPC DA)
In addition to all that, the malware authors also wrote a tool that
implements a denial-of-service (DoS) attack against a particular family of
protection relays, ..."

Click HERE for a comprehensive report [pdf].

The Conclusion of the report closes with this statement:

"The commonly-used industrial control protocols used in this malware
were designed decades ago without taking security into consideration.
Therefore, any intrusion into an industrial network with systems using
these protocols should be considered as “game over”."

The protocols used are not the crucial issue! The protocols like IEC 61850 could be protected by the accompanying standard series IEC 62351 (Power systems management and associated information exchange - Data and communications security).
One crucial show stopper is: "Stingy is cool" mentality!!
Securing the systems could be implemented - with far higher costs during development, engineering, configuration, OPERATION, and maintenance.
As long as we all do not accept that the electric power (and other) infrastructures will require a lot more resources to keep the level of today's availability, quality, and security, we will experience more disrupted infrastructures.
Building an infrastructure, operating, and maintaining it are different aspects. The maintenance of our infrastructures will consume definitely more resources than we believe today.
I was shocked to read, that some "friends" believe that the reports about the "Industroyer" are just fake news.
Whatever you believe, one thing is really true: Many systems and devices in the automation domain (substations, ...) are not protected! Believe me!

Final Call for IEC 61850 Training Courses in May 2017 in Karlsruhe (Germany)

The following two training courses are just one (two) weeks away:

02.-05. May 2017, Karlsruhe/Germany:


Click HERE for details - and register as soon as possible.

09.-12. Mai 2017, Karlsruhe/Deutschland
HIER klicken - für Details zum Training in Deutsch