DEF CON 30 - Jimmy Wylie - Analyzing PIPEDREAM - Challenges in Testing an ICS Attack Toolkit

Identified early in 2022, PIPEDREAM is the seventh-known ICS-specific malware and the fifth malware specifically developed to disrupt industrial processes. PIPEDREAM demonstrates significant adversary research and development focused on the disruption, degradation, and potentially, the destruction of industrial environments and physical processes. PIPEDREAM can impact a wide variety of PLCs including Omron and Schneider Electric controllers. PIPEDREAM can also execute attacks that take advantage of ubiquitous industrial protocols, including CODESYS, Modbus, FINS, and OPC-UA. This presentation will summarize the malware, and detail the difficulties encountered during the reverse engineering and analysis of the malware to include acquiring equipment and setting up our lab. This talk will also release the latest results from Drago's lab including an assessment of the breadth of impact of PIPEDREAM's CODESYS modules on equipment beyond Schneider Electric's PLCs, testing Omron servo manipulation, as well as OPC-UA server manipulation. While a background in ICS is helpful to understand this talk, it is not required. The audience will learn about what challenges they can expect to encounter when testing ICS malware and how to overcome them.