Viasat and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day
Summary: On Feb. 24, 2022, hours before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, attackers exploited a vulnerability in a VPN appliance to reach the management systems of Viasat's KA-SAT satellite network and deployed AcidRain, a wiper designed to erase data on modems and routers across Europe. Satellite communications were disrupted for thousands of users in Ukraine, and roughly 5,800 Enercon wind turbines in Germany lost connectivity for remote monitoring and control.
Why it matters: A single exploited VPN appliance reached a satellite network's management systems and knocked 5,800 wind turbines in another country offline, so the blast radius of one unpatched edge device extended well past the intended target.
Read the original at Cisco Talos ↗
- Topics
- Endpoint & Network Security
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