Command and Control

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 Command and Control 

The first known take down of a country’s power grid from a cyberattack happened on December 23, 2015. The details of the hack are summarized in detail by Wired. At about 3:30 pm local time, a worker inside the Prykarpattyaoblenergo control center saw his mouse’s cursor move across the screen. The ghostly cursor floated toward the digital controls of the circuit breakers at a substation, and began taking them offline. Almost 30 substations subsequently went down, and 230,000 residents were forced to spend a cold evening in the dark in Western Ukraine, with a blistering low of 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

What you need to know: A command and control attack is when a hacker takes over a computer in order to send commands or malware to other systems on the network. In some cases, the attacker performs reconnaissance activities, moving laterally across the network to gather sensitive data. In other attacks, hackers may use this infrastructure to launch actual attacks. One of the most important functions of this infrastructure is to establish servers that will communicate with implants on compromised endpoints. These attacks are also often referred to as C2 or C&C attacks.

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