From: Nextgov
The Homeland Security Department last year alerted dozens of critical infrastructure operators that attackers might have accessed their networks by tainting external websites that personnel had visited.
The detail was disclosed in an annual summary of efforts undertaken by the DHS Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, which aids utilities, banks and other key U.S. sectors whose business networks government officials have deemed essential to national and economic security.
This type of malicious campaign — known as a watering hole attack — takes advantage of vulnerabilities in Web software to insert code that can then infiltrate the computers of site visitors.
“ICS-CERT was concerned that the websites involved may have been selected to target critical infrastructure asset owners,” DHS officials stated. “Working with the targeted website owners to identify potential victims of the compromised sites, ICS-CERT assisted over 50 critical infrastructure organizations to ensure they were aware of the potential compromise” from the infected sites and aware of “possible attacker lateral movement across networks.”
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