As Congress Debates Critical Infrastructure Security, Danger Grows

10 Massive Security Breaches

How long might it take to properly secure the systems that comprise the critical infrastructure? Try 25 years, give or take half a decade.

As debate in the Senate intensifies over whether businesses should be required to secure critical infrastructure systems, security experts at the RSA conference in San Francisco last week warned that whatever decisions get made now, the related security issues could persist for decades.

"The replacement cycle in critical infrastructure is 20 to 30 years. So, right now, most of the U.S. critical infrastructure is running on software developed 25 years ago," said Roel Schouwenberg, senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab, speaking at RSA.

With that timeline in mind, should the government require private businesses in critical infrastructure sectors to begin implementing better information security practices, including improved control system security? That's one question being debated now in Congress.

Two Senate bills have proposed different approaches to the problem. The Cybersecurity Act of 2012, introduced last month by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), together with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), would give the Department of Homeland Security the ability to regulate the information security practices of businesses involved in the critical sector. It would also require them to share participate in threat intelligence information sharing with the government.

[ Can the government help businesses with security in other ways? Read Should NSA Be Scanning Business Networks? ]

Some Republican senators, however, have criticized the Lieberman-Collins bill, saying it would add to businesses' regulatory burden, and possibly duplicate existing Department of Defense security initiatives. As a more hands-off alternative, eight high-ranking Republican senators Thursday introduced a bill they've dubbed Secure IT.

"The centerpiece of this legislation is a framework for voluntary information sharing," said John McCain (R-Ariz.), the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, at a news conference to announce the bill. Known in longhand as the Strengthening and Enhancing Cybersecurity by Using Research, Education, Information and Technology Act, the bill's backers also include GOP Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Dan Coats (R-Ind.).

Similarly, a group of House Republicans has introduced a bill that focuses on information sharing. "Regulation is not favored by our caucus in the House, we would prefer that the private sector do what they can to protect their own investments," said Kevin Gronberg, senior counsel to the Committee on Homeland Security in the U.S. House of Representatives, speaking at RSA. "But that being said, we need to make sure that the private sector has the appropriate information it needs to protect their investment, to protect their networks, which they know better than anyone else."

Sen. Hutchison, who's the ranking member of the Senate committee on commerce, science, and transportation, has said the GOP senators hope to synchronize their proposed bill with the Lieberman-Collins bill.

Some security experts, however, have questioned whether information sharing alone will resolve current critical infrastructure security shortcomings. "After Stuxnet, I got quite involved with the U.S. critical infrastructure, and what's very clear to me is that unless things are mandated by D.C., nothing is changing," said Kaspersky Lab's Schouwenberg. "These companies are being run for the bottom line, and there's simply no budget for anything that's not being mandated by D.C."

In the meantime, growing interest in control system vulnerabilities by the security research community has been lowering the bar for any would-be control system attacker. Last month, for example, a number of recent vulnerabilities were added to Metasploit, a free toolkit that can be used to penetration test--or simply attack--systems that contain known vulnerabilities. "That's allowing people who are not necessarily very knowledgeable about these systems to go out and affect them," said control system security expert Joe Weiss, who heads Applied Control Solutions, via phone. "Because some of the vendors haven't fixed any of this yet."

While vendors may not be rapidly fixing vulnerabilities in their industrial control system software, even when such patches do get released, many businesses also don't rush to install them.

Furthermore, would-be attackers can easily locate Internet-connected control systems--many of which were never designed to be connected to the Internet, and which lack appropriate safeguards--using a search tool such as Shodan. "Many of the people that operate these devices probably don't even realize that they're Internet-facing, so that's a concern," said Jenny Menna, director of critical infrastructure cyber protection and awareness for the National Cyber Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security.

Secure Sockets Layer isn't perfect, but there are ways to optimize it. The new Web Encryption That Works supplement from Dark Reading shows four places to start. (Free registration required.)