In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:
- Introduction to SCADA/ICS
- Using Nmap to scan SCADA/ICS
- Using Nessus to scan SCADA/ICS systems
In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:
The automation technology used to manage and perform various industrial operations such as line management control and operations control are part of what is known as operational technology:
Industrial control systems (ICS) cover a huge part of the operational technology segment, and are used to monitor and control various operations such as automating production, the control and monitoring of hardware systems, regulating temperature by controlling water levels, and the flow at a nuclear facility. Most ICS usage is done in very critical systems that are required to be available all the time.
The hardware that is used for ICS is of two types, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), or discrete process control systems (DPC), which are in turn managed by Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. SCADA allows and makes easy the management...
Nmap provides multiple scripts, and its function also allows users to create multiple custom scripts to identify the SCADA systems that are present in a network. This allows an analyst to create specific test cases to test the SCADA systems. Some of the scripts that are available by default in the latest Nmap Script library are as follows:
We will see the syntax and the usage of these scripts in the following recipes.
Nessus has a family of plugins – about 308 pages of them – that can be used to perform scans on SCADA/ICS devices. You can browse the family of plugins here: https://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/families/SCADA . These plugins are checked against the given device to identify any vulnerability that has been identified based on the signatures present in the plugin.
In order to complete this activity, you will have to satisfy the following prerequisites on your machine:
In order to install Nessus, you can follow the instructions provided in Chapter...