As cyber attack methods continue to evolve, industrial control systems, represented by power systems, are gradually shifting from being a “secondary impact area” to a core target in the cyber attack chain. Especially in the context of the ongoing advancement of the industrial internet and the continuous integration of “cloud-edge-end” collaborative systems into key business processes such as power dispatch, distribution automation, and intelligent operation and maintenance, ICS systems are no longer the traditional “physical islands”; the previously relied-upon model of ensuring security through physical isolation is becoming ineffective.
In the past decade, the energy sector, especially power grid systems, has frequently become a primary target for cyber attacks, exposing the high-risk characteristics of its core infrastructure in cyberspace. The energy sector is becoming a priority target for cyber attacks, and the cybersecurity capabilities of power systems have become an important component of national overall security capabilities. At the same time, due to the high real-time, high reliability, and strong coupling characteristics of power systems, once the control system is manipulated, the physical impact will present an irreversible chain reaction, causing significant shocks to the economy, people’s livelihoods, and even national security.
The Fourfold Security Dilemma of Industrial Control Systems
As the core support of national critical infrastructure, the security of industrial control systems directly relates to the stable operation of vital industries such as energy, manufacturing, and transportation. However, under the wave of digital transformation, the “vulnerabilities” of these systems are gradually being exposed:
Dilemma One: The “Security Gene Defect” of Original Architecture
The core devices in industrial control systems, such as PLCs, HMIs, and DCSs, were designed with high reliability and real-time performance as primary goals, and generally did not incorporate cybersecurity mechanisms. The communication protocols used (such as Modbus, DNP3, etc.) are mostly transmitted in plaintext, lacking identity authentication, access control, and encryption mechanisms, making them easy to tamper with or forge control commands in an open environment, creating natural attack entry points.
Dilemma Two: The “Sick Operation Dilemma” of Legacy Systems
Industrial control devices have long deployment cycles and high update costs, with many systems running for over 10 years, using operating systems and application software that have long ceased maintenance, making it difficult to obtain timely security patches. Once vulnerabilities are exposed, repairs are challenging, often requiring long-term operation in a “sick” state, allowing attackers to maintain long-term stealth or repeated infiltration.
Dilemma Three: The “Attack Surface Fission” of IT/OT Integration
As industrial informationization and digital transformation accelerate, traditional closed OT systems are gradually connecting to enterprise management networks, cloud platforms, and remote operation and maintenance systems, breaking the original “physical isolation” protection concept. Attackers can infiltrate the OT side from the IT side through phishing emails, VPN vulnerabilities, remote desktop services, third-party maintenance interfaces, etc., constructing lateral movement links to ultimately control core devices.
Dilemma Four: The “Defense Hollowing” of Operation and Maintenance Systems
Many industrial sites lack a complete operation and maintenance security system, with unclear network boundary divisions, simple or even absent access control policies, and some systems still using default passwords or weak passwords. The lack of log monitoring and intrusion detection mechanisms allows attackers to complete initial intrusions and privilege acquisitions with very low thresholds and remain undetected for long periods.
Implementing Industrial Control Security Protection Services is Urgent
With the deep development of global industrial internet and digital infrastructure, traditional industrial control systems are gradually transitioning from “closed islands” to “wide-area interconnections.” The degree of networking of control devices is increasing, with remote monitoring, cloud-based operation and maintenance, data collection, and analysis extending into OT systems, which also introduces a large number of IT-level security risks. In this context, the boundaries of industrial control networks are becoming increasingly blurred, the attack surface is continuously expanding, and the security protection situation is becoming dramatically more complex.
The network attack threats faced by national critical infrastructure are becoming increasingly realistic. Energy, electricity, water conservancy, petrochemicals, transportation, and manufacturing industries have become key targets for national and organizational threat actors, with attackers often aiming for long-term stealth, damaging key nodes, and inducing physical consequences, exhibiting strong concealment and destructiveness. On the other hand, in the absence of regular detection and risk assessment, issues such as vulnerabilities, hidden dangers, and misconfigurations remain long-term latent within the systems, and once subjected to targeted attacks, they can easily trigger chain reactions, leading to widespread business interruptions, equipment damage, and even personal injury.
In the face of an increasingly severe attack situation, industrial control security testing is not an optional task, but a “required course” that relates to national security and the safety of enterprise production operations. It is not only to meet compliance requirements but also to enhance the visibility of risks in industrial control networks and to serve as a frontline defense against large-scale physical destruction. Security testing should no longer be limited to “peripheral scanning” but should delve into every type of core industrial control asset, conducting “point-to-point” refined testing from multiple dimensions such as functional logic, communication behavior, and system configuration.
1.Conducting “Risk Identification” Testing
Engineering stations and operator stations, due to their important responsibilities in configuration development, logic issuance, and monitoring command operations, are often viewed by attackers as the optimal “invasion entry point” and “logic control point.” These hosts mostly run in Windows environments, equipped with complex industrial software systems, lacking mandatory permission controls, and are prone to issues such as unfortified components, long-term missing patches, and exposed interfaces. Once compromised, attackers can not only implant persistent backdoors, record operational behaviors, and hijack software execution but can also manipulate lower-level devices by modifying project logic and uploading malicious commands. Therefore, testing for engineering stations should focus on the system operating environment, sensitive components, permission configurations, and the execution process of configuration tools to identify whether there are hidden risk points with high utility and significant control permissions.
2.Conducting “Hardware Device” Testing
Many devices were often not designed with network attack risks in mind, with unencrypted firmware, unauthorized control of remote operation ports, and a lack of log auditing for logic uploads and downloads being common phenomena, making them easy to exploit for program tampering or command injection. In addition, some devices have “debug modes” or maintenance backdoors that have not been closed, providing attackers with the possibility to bypass normal processes and directly control on-site devices. Security testing should delve into the internal workings of devices, verifying whether there are exploitable vulnerabilities, default weak passwords, or missing logical access controls through firmware version identification and hidden interface testing, ensuring that they do not become security weaknesses in any network exposure scenario.
3. Conducting “Industrial Control Software” Testing
Industrial control configuration software is the platform for constructing system operational logic, and its configuration content directly determines the execution path and action sequence of control processes. However, in actual use, many configuration projects have issues such as unverified logic, script interface abuse, and hidden function calls, allowing attackers to achieve persistent control or backdoor deployment by tampering with project files, inserting malicious scripts, or hijacking internal modules. Since configuration project files are mostly in proprietary formats with complex internal structures, the difficulty of testing is much higher than that of ordinary software configuration files. Effective testing should combine business logic and software operating mechanisms, analyzing whether the control processes are consistent with on-site behaviors, identifying whether abnormal operation chains, unauthorized script commands, or disguised components are embedded in the project, preventing attacks from embedding “invisible commands” within “visible logic.”
4. Conducting “Industrial Control Protocol” Testing
As the foundation for system communication and command transmission, industrial control protocols have long been unfortified and generally lack identity verification and encryption mechanisms, making them the easiest breakthrough point for attackers. For example, with protocols like Modbus, S7, and OPC, attackers only need to understand the protocol format to construct illegal commands, achieving forced writing of registers, shutting down outputs, and forging statuses. Protocol abuse does not rely on high-privilege logins and does not require changes to device configurations, exhibiting extremely high concealment and destructiveness. Testing should be based on actual traffic to restore communication behaviors, conducting behavior audits in conjunction with industrial process semantics to identify whether there are command calls unrelated to normal processes, high-frequency accesses, or unauthorized operations, thereby promptly detecting signs of protocol-layer attacks and preventing remote control from inadvertently triggering security incidents.
Electric Science Network Security has long focused on the excavation of industrial control system security vulnerabilities and security testing technology research, possessing full-chain capabilities from protocol analysis, firmware reverse engineering to real network testing. The team continuously conducts protocol security analysis and binary vulnerability excavation work around mainstream control system devices and their configurations, having discovered and verified key security vulnerabilities in multiple vendor devices, and possesses the capability for in-depth analysis of industrial control system devices’ 0-day practical excavation, assisting clients in securing their digital transformation.
*Images sourced from the internet
Further Reading
1. Insights on Energy Industrial Control Security from the India-Pakistan Conflict
2. 116 Tankers Grounded: How Can Industrial Control Security Ensure Safety?
