Global ICS exposures exceed 145K, report reveals

More than 145,000 industrial control systems worldwide were exposed to the internet, over a third of which were based in North America, according to The Hacker News.

Internet-exposed ICS was most prevalent in the U.S., followed by Turkey, South Korea, Italy, and Canada, a report from Censys showed. The U.S. also had the highest exposures for human-machine interfaces. Additional findings revealed the regional differences in attack surfaces, with North America widely adopting the Fox, BACNet, C-more, and ATG ICS protocols while Europe implemented the S7, Modbus, and IEC 60870-5-104 protocols. “Many of these protocols can be dated back to the 1970s but remain foundational to industrial processes without the same security improvements the rest of the world has seen,” said Censys co-founder and Chief Scientist Zakir Durumeric. Such a development follows a Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 report detailing attacks involving the FrostyGoop malware, also known as BUSTLEBERM, which have been targeted at Modbus TCP devices.