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T0813 Denial of Control

Adversaries may cause a denial of control to temporarily prevent operators and engineers from interacting with process controls. An adversary may attempt to deny process control access to cause a temporary loss of communication with the control device or to prevent operator adjustment of process controls. An affected process may still be operating during the period of control loss, but not necessarily in a desired state. 1 3 4

In the 2017 Dallas Siren incident operators were unable to disable the false alarms from the Office of Emergency Management headquarters. 2

Item Value
ID T0813
Sub-techniques
Tactics TA0105
Platforms None
Version 1.1
Created 21 May 2020
Last Modified 15 April 2025

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
C0028 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, KillDisk rendered devices that were necessary for remote recovery unusable, including at least one RTU. Additionally, Sandworm Team overwrote the firmware for serial-to-ethernet converters, denying operators control of the downstream devices. 910
S0604 Industroyer Industroyer is able to block serial COM channels temporarily causing a denial of control. 8
C0020 Maroochy Water Breach In the Maroochy Water Breach, the adversary temporarily shut an investigator out of the network preventing them from issuing any controls.11

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M0953 Data Backup Take and store data backups from end user systems and critical servers. Ensure backup and storage systems are hardened and kept separate from the corporate network to prevent compromise. Maintain and exercise incident response plans 6, including the management of gold-copy back-up images and configurations for key systems to enable quick recovery and response from adversarial activities that impact control, view, or availability.
M0810 Out-of-Band Communications Channel Provide operators with redundant, out-of-band communication to support monitoring and control of the operational processes, especially when recovering from a network outage 5. Out-of-band communication should utilize diverse systems and technologies to minimize common failure modes and vulnerabilities within the communications infrastructure. For example, wireless networks (e.g., 3G, 4G) can be used to provide diverse and redundant delivery of data.
M0811 Redundancy of Service Hot-standbys in diverse locations can ensure continued operations if the primarily system are compromised or unavailable. At the network layer, protocols such as the Parallel Redundancy Protocol can be used to simultaneously use redundant and diverse communication over a local network. 7

References

  1. Corero Industrial Control System (ICS) Security Retrieved. 2019/11/04  ↩

  2. Mark Loveless 2017, April 11 THE DALLAS COUNTY SIREN HACK Retrieved. 2020/11/06  ↩

  3. Michael J. Assante and Robert M. Lee SANS Industrial Control System (ICS) Security; The Industrial Control System Cyber Kill Chain Retrieved 2024/11/25 ↩

  4. Tyson Macaulay Michael J. Assante and Robert M. Lee Corero Industrial Control System (ICS) Security Retrieved. 2019/11/04 The Industrial Control System Cyber Kill Chain Retrieved. 2019/11/04 RIoT Control: Understanding and Managing Risks and the Internet of Things Retrieved. 2019/11/04  ↩

  5. National Institute of Standards and Technology 2013, April Security and Privacy Controls for Federal Information Systems and Organizations Retrieved. 2020/09/17  ↩

  6. Department of Homeland Security 2009, October Developing an Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity Incident Response Capability Retrieved. 2020/09/17  ↩

  7. M. Rentschler and H. Heine The Parallel Redundancy Protocol for industrial IP networks Retrieved. 2020/09/25  ↩

  8. Anton Cherepanov, ESET 2017, June 12 Win32/Industroyer: A new threat for industrial control systems Retrieved. 2017/09/15  ↩

  9. Booz Allen Hamilton. (2016). When The Lights Went Out. Retrieved December 18, 2024. ↩

  10. Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center; SANS Industrial Control Systems. (2016, March 18). Analysis of the Cyber Attack on the Ukranian Power Grid: Defense Use Case. Retrieved March 27, 2018. ↩

  11. Marshall Abrams 2008, July 23 Malicious Control System Cyber Security Attack Case Study Maroochy Water Services, Australia Retrieved. 2018/03/27  ↩