What made this hack a little different, according to the story by Jim Finkle, was that it was a first for an industrial plant. Speculation has more often focused on “conventional” critical facilities like data centers and public utilities systems, along with the wave of ransomware victims that has included a hospital. Somewhat unnerving is the report that the hackers seemed to be on a sort of reconnaissance mission more than a full-on attack. In any event, “sophisticated malware to take remote control of a workstation” will give pause to any number of manufacturers and facility engineers.

Check out those two articles, and if you’ve had actual experience with attempts to hack a system, I’d love to hear about it. Write me at beverlyr@bnpmedia.com or connect at LinkedIn.

SESSIONS WITH SINCLAIR

The only thing Ken Sinclair is trying to hack is the future of building automation for the better. I’ll give one more quick plug to his free educational sessions for all of you rolling into Chicago later this month for AHR and ASHRAE events. Monday morning at 9:30 a.m., the trio kicks off with “Data At The Open Intelligent Edge.” A cousin session starts at 1:30 p.m., a panel discussing “Growing The Open Intelligent Edge” and how current trends will change the whole architecture of building systems with open source/open standards.

Then on Tuesday morning, “Are Master System Integrators Becoming The New Building Data Architects?” tackles the question of … well, you know. The role of consulting engineers has been shifting and somewhat up for grabs within the building automation world ever since Sinclair was writing his monthly column for us, so go absorb some current ideas to stay on top of an ever-fluid dynamic.

HACKERS POSTSCRIPT

By the way, my wife was right. Sneakers is really good, and it features a pretty spectacular cast. Now that I think about it, I’ll spoil just a little of it by telling you that in fact, its plot does include a BAS hack!

Meanwhile, although it stars Jonny Lee Miller (who more recently found fame in the U.S. as the lead in “Elementary”) and Angelina Jolie, 20 years later I’ve still never seen Hackers. In retrospect, my little story seems fitting enough since after all, you don’t see hackers coming until they’ve shown up. Then the question is: how well are you guarding the front and back door?

ES WEBINARS BOX

Register for our free webinars at webinars.esmagazine.com, where registered users can also view any webinar from the last year on demand in our archive. Our 2018 webinars will be rolling out soon!

INDUSTRY EVENTS 2018