New Hacker Target: Gas Stations


Others hackers stormed in. On two occasions, hackers changed the names of the systems to their own, taking it over. FYI – the hackers names were: the Iranian Dark Coders Team and the Syrian Electronic Army. Just a bunch of fun loving college jokers, eh?

What can they do? Popsci.com notes:

The bad news is, hackers can still cause a lot of headaches by messing with these systems. For example, they could alter the readings on a particular station so that a fuel truck delivering refills could cause a tank to overflow, creating a fire hazard. The hackers could also keep tabs on delivery schedules and plan attacks that way. They could also burrow in and insert their own safety systems, locking fuel companies out until they’d paid a ransom.

Read the report here.

One last thing: There’s not a lot of security gas station systems. No one sees the danger. Hilt and Wilhoit have published a whitepaper encouraging companies to take their systems offline or beef up security dramatically.

If they take over gas stations that are not sophisticated, imagine what they can do with your car electronics.

 

Photo: Allen on Flickr



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