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T0826 Loss of Availability

Adversaries may attempt to disrupt essential components or systems to prevent owner and operator from delivering products or services. 2 3 4

Adversaries may leverage malware to delete or encrypt critical data on HMIs, workstations, or databases.

In the 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident, pipeline operations were temporally halted on May 7th and were not fully restarted until May 12th. 1

Item Value
ID T0826
Sub-techniques
Tactics TA0105
Platforms None
Version 1.0
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, Sandworm Team opened the breakers at the infected sites, shutting the power off for thousands of businesses and households for around 6 hours. 1110
S0608 Conficker A Conficker infection at a nuclear power plant forced the facility to temporarily shutdown. 8
C0041 FrostyGoop Incident During FrostyGoop Incident, the adversary modified victim control system parameters resulting in the loss of heating services to impacted district heating customers.12
C0031 Unitronics Defacement Campaign During the Unitronics Defacement Campaign, the CyberAv3ngers caused multiple businesses to halt operations due to the unavailability of the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and Human-Machine Interface (HMI). These victims covered multiple sectors.9

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 7, 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 is 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. 6

References

  1. Colonial Pipeline Company 2021, May Media Statement Update: Colonial Pipeline System Disruption Retrieved. 2021/10/08  ↩

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

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

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

  8. Catalin Cimpanu 2016, April 26 Malware Shuts Down German Nuclear Power Plant on Chernobyl’s 30th Anniversary Retrieved. 2019/10/14  ↩

  9. Jamie Tarabay and Katrina Manson. (2023, December 22). Iranian-Linked Hacks Expose Failure to Safeguard US Water System. Retrieved March 25, 2024. ↩

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

  11. 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. ↩

  12. Mark Graham, Carolyn Ahlers, Kyle O’Meara; Dragos. (2024, July). Impact of FrostyGoop ICS Malware on Connected OT Systems. Retrieved November 20, 2024. ↩