Researcher demos attacks on Siemens industrial control systems

LAS VEGAS--A researcher said today that he has discovered a number of vulnerabilities in programmable logic controllers (PLCs) from Siemens that are used to automate mechanical devices in utilities, power plants, and other industrial control environments and which could be remotely controlled to cause damage if connected to the Internet.

Dillon Beresford, a security researcher at NSS Labs, conducted demos of some attacks on the various Siemens Simatic Step 7 systems during his presentation at the Black Hat security conference here.