Security/Engineering: An Introduction to Industrial Control Systems

About Josh

Josh is a former inhabitant of subtropical Whangarei, now living in subsubsubtropical Christchurch. He dropped out of beauty school to become a hacker. Essentially this means that he’s totally bewildered most of the time by his entire environment, but has fortunately developed a knack for channeling that bewilderment into computers and getting them equally bewildered such that they follow his lead and make unusual decisions. He organises a team of security consultants for Lateral Security in Christchurch.

Talk Overview

It seems that the cyberapocalypse is upon us. The news media are reporting that nation-states are all up in each other’s power grids. That’s right, Russia are not content with owning the entire US political system and have continued their streak by shelling other untrustworthy, vintage things that we wish we didn’t rely upon for safety. Battlefields are being prepared, with malware taking up residence in operational technology environments, reconnoitring industrial control systems.

Well, if they’re going to be our doom, we should at least know what they are: Could it potentially be dangerous to let Windows XP boxes control robot arms with welding torches attached? Is SCADA pronounced SKAH-DAH or SKAY-DAH? Is a data historian a person who works with antique computers? How does securing and attacking operational technology differ from the same in a corporate network? This talk will answer all these questions and one or two more.