The US energy sector had witnessed more malware attacks than any industry during the spring and summer last year, which also resulted in costly outages at pipelines, oil refineries and drilling platforms, a new report revealed.
Alert Logic’s State of Cloud Security Bulletin, revealed that in 2013 brute-force attacks and botnet infestations have been increasing at an alarming rate.
According to data from the US Department of Homeland Security’s Industrial Control System-Cyber Emergency Response Team, about 41% of the overall malware attacks experienced in 2012 were carried out on systems of energy companies, including grid operators and natural gas pipeline firms.
Alert Logic lead researcher Stephen Coty said that the energy sector is a big part of the global economy and therefore has extremely high-stakes security risks compared to other industries.
"Daily survival of the population and businesses alike depend on the availability of energy resources, making energy companies a prime target for hackers," Coty said.
About 67% of energy firms reportedly experienced brute force attacks, compared to 34% of overall customer set, while 61% of them experienced malware/botnet infiltration attacks, than 13% of complete customer set.
"Unlike an attack on an e-commerce site or SaaS application provider, a malware infiltration attack on an energy company could grow to catastrophic proportions if hackers were able to block or flood the oil and gas pipeline infrastructure," Coty added.
"This industry doesn’t see the typical web application attacks.
"It experiences a greater magnitude of security threats that could have global repercussions for years to come."
