Another odd observation about the industry. For better or for worse, I inherited a little system controlled by a Fanuc PLC. It had a bug and would occasionally get stuck in a bad state. By some minor miracle, I managed to track down the person who had originally programmed it (now retired and moved out of state), and he emailed me a file and introduced me to his apprentice (who lives in a third state). I found a trial version of the design software, opened the file and found the bug (despite never having seen this style of programming before). Since I had no way to upload a new file (and since it wasn’t clear that uploading it without a matching outdated and not easily available copy of the programming environment would be wise), I convinced the apprentice to come visit while we was nearby for another client. He did not see the bug even when I pointed it out, but I convinced him to make the change and upload the modified file. Now the system works. (He had a Windows laptop with a giant folder of customer files, of course.)

While he was on site, I asked him why there was nothing on the PLC or its enclosure to identify his old boss or give any contact information, and he seemed surprised and told me that no one ever does that. I asked how a new owner is supposed to get support, and he shrugged.

If this thing ever fails, I’ll probably replace it with an Arduino or an ESP32 or something along those lines. Or I’ll just find something off the shelf to replace the entire system.

Everything you're describing mirrors my experience with remote scientific deployments and lab equipment (wet labs in particular). I support a team which manages dozens of these, and while it's shocking how inefficient and unsafe their practices are, it's similarly shocking how poorly the industry has kept up with or even tried to establish better practices. We get brand new equipment that costs in the realm of $10k for a tiny logger, and the thing is barely capable of remotely managed deployment of version controlled firmware. There are no tools in place to allow proper testing of the firmware unless you have the cash to buy extras and build test harnesses from them. The firmware itself is often in languages that don't have proper testing frameworks, type systems, IDEs, etc.

It's HARD to do the right thing. Dragging and dropping files into proprietary hardware management programs is the de facto standard.

Then you layer on top the unfortunate reality that sometimes electricity does weird stuff, people design weird circuits or wire the wrong components in, and firmware tends to have to deal with non-deterministic inputs a lot more often than, say, an API on the web. It's rough.

The pay is also so much worse in my experience.

Im supposed to be doing endpoint work with people working in this field amd basically have to convince compliance they'll need to be local administrators to do their job. They get onsite and dont know what app they'll need until they look at a plc model. They'll download something from a .tw ftp server and its an unsigned executable that absolutely must run as admin to program these things.

It is amazing how much of the sysadmin community just doesnt believe this is a thing you need to work with, everyone insisting its just security people being lazy and so on.

Oh I can tell stories too! Meanwhile these guys often have huge amounts of practical experience as electricians or control technicians/engineers to go with their PLC skills, so you can't just say we should get rid of them either.

Breaking into the industrial market is tricky if you don't have connections too. And if you're hired as the PLC programmer, it's sometimes an afterthought AFTER the plant is already built. "What do you mean it'll take another month? The plant is finished, isn't it?".

Oh, and some projects ban "PC"s to begin with. Which sort of excludes any kind of PC programmer. And it sort of even makes sense. A lot of default PC behaviors (especially commercial software), are no longer user-unfriendly but potentially very expensive or even user-lethal when attached to a physical plant.

Sounds like I could learn some things from you (and maybe vice versa). Poke me on the email in my HN profile!

A colleague of mine transitioned from a senior IC role to manager of a PLC group in the same company. Their methods were just as unsophisticated as you describe, and now he is attempting to evangelize/impose the finer parts of software engineering discipline, such as source control and integration tests (which can be trickier when it requires a hardware test bed.) Bringing some new tools to bear can be a fun job, as long as the team trusts you.

Sounds like we have a similar development path. People fail to understand how complex some of these systems can be, especially since you have to have the project to understand what registers/variables are what. Some when Joe the contractor does a job and walks away, you better make sure they give you the project and you store it in a nice safe place.

A good system integrator is worth their weight in gold. Sure they cost more, but getting a whole package turned over to you is worth a million more than 5 years into the lifecycle of a factory when someone wants to make mods/fix a bug/etc and has to reinvent the whole car, not just the wheel.

This industry is always 10-20 years in the past. My company’s preferred vendor only just started supporting virtualization (this is for a DCS) in the past 10 years. I still have to tell my sales people to provide A/V and minimalistic backup and recovery on every project (they essentially cost nothing compared to the rest of any project).

I agree. The problem is this: most companies using PLCs work in isolated networks with internet disconnected, based on confidentiality. There are many difficulties even with using git, because the structure forces you to implement features in a way that makes it hard to separate them. Branching, in particular, doesn't work well with PLC ladder logic—PLC uses proprietary binary formats that make diff tracking impossible, so you're forced into a unified development approach

> So, anyways, just imagine the most archaic and barbaric set of IT software, controls, and procedures, dumb that down even further, and you've landed on the infrastructure/teams that operate probably half of critical infrastructure.

Same with SCADA: just as bad as what you describe.

Storytime: Once upon a time, I was a young grasshopper at a small consulting firm at which every employee was issued a Windows machine, our source control system was "\Customers" on C: drive, and our deployment strategy was "putty + copy-paste + hot-reload".

One morning, I heard something terrible while my boss's boss's machine was booting. Something akin to grinding. The thing was angry.

I gave boss^2 a heads-up that his hard drive might be failing, and that he might want to run a S.M.A.R.T. check on the poor thing. I also asked where the backup hard drives were, because I was brand-new and assumed that I just hadn't been issued one yet.

I checked the supply closet, found no hard drives, popped over to the office admin person, and recommended a deal I'd seen on some WD black drives before I realized that the place had gone quiet.

Everyone looked at me like I was from Mars.

Exactly 7 days later, boss^2's hard drive failed. We lost a week of work and had to zero out a 5 days x 3 employees worth of billable hours. We also ended up delivering late.

The client was pissed.

Based on the nasty looks that I got afterwards, it appeared that the standard assumption was that I had tampered with the drive to prove a point. (Um, nope).

I have since learned to ask prospective employers about their backup strategy.

The worst part -as I mentioned in another comment few days earlier- is most of the network is ancient, dialup, poor architecture designed by people who barely touched a computer, very old OSes, one utility had windows 3.1 a couple years ago! For them as long as it’s working, don’t touch it, because a downtime is far more costly and it will bring many eyes and attention to them than just sit and hope nothing will happen. Physical security is a major gap too, I have been to many locations where the field server panels are just behind the door, the RTUs are just closed with panel keys, even the whole facility are using some old HID cards that you can unlock in few seconds, this is even in R&D that beyond automation but also in robotic ones.

> This industry is in _desperate_ need of strong technical help, but unfortunately the "higher ups" tend to be the same people who are "comfortable" with the way thing are and refuse to move. I literally tried for a decade before giving up and moving into software engineering proper.

As soon as AI can automate the development and deployment of physical infrastructure and the firmware that drives it, watch how willing to embrace the "cutting edge" those same higher-ups become.

I mean it worked fine for 50 years, surely it will work fine for another 50

If that means you need to at least be physically present then I'd say that's a lot of protection already. Means someone in a foreign country can't simply get lucky fuzzing.

Wouldn't the physical facilities themselves have security?

How is it NSA/DHS negligence? Neither is responsible for securing the infrastructure of state and local governments nor private companies.

They should provide guidance, but I’m not sure we really want the NSA inside of networks more than they already are.

If voters and CEOs don’t want to spend the money required to secure their infrastructure, that’s on them.

Unlike the CIA and/or FBI being in charge of preventing attacks like 9/11, NSA and DHS aren't in charge of each state's or city's infrastructure. They could run some opt-in program that local governments could then engage with, but "negligence" is a bit strong for systems they're not in charge of and have no access to.

https://www.nsa.gov/Cybersecurity/Cybersecurity-Advisories-G...

While that’s not the job of the NSA, they do produce a lot of good cybersecurity guides.

Disagree. Why connect them to the internet? They should be super hardened against attacks, and should NOT have a physical connection to the internet. Same with electrical infrastructure. Network access? Possibly, however that network should NOT be accessible from the internet.

The only exception I can think of would be for meter reading, which should be a separate, read only device with no ability to do harm altogether.

If it’s connected, it’s compromised. Or will be.

Folly to think otherwise.

Rather than "on/off" I think we need to distinguish between at least four things:

1. Connected naively to the internet.

2. Behind a hardened VPN endpoint which is on the internet.

3. Has a separate physical private network.

4. Requires physical access.

I think it's obvious that #1 should be prohibited in favor of #2. After that point we need to ask what the impact is of a Denial of Service attack that prevents anyone from remotely accessing the system.

The difference between #2 and #3 may depend on whether things could be Very Bad if the system is disconnected at a time of the attacker's choosing. For example, disabling access to flood-control valves during a hurricane.

A data diode can allow monitoring via the internet without risking ingress of control. Commercial units aren't cheap though.

Obviously we need open source designs.

Perhaps the easiest way would be a Raspberry pi set up with an opto isolated CGA/EGA/VGA/SVGA capture that could be viewed via the internet? (I mean, we're probably talking systems still running MS-DOS or Windows 98 running these systems)

"If done competently" is a bold assumption unfortunately, not just these days but always

If we can beat a security-state airgap by sprinkling USB drives in the parking lot, I think the Iranians can beat an "internal" network by getting someone to click on an email attachment or visit the wrong website on their municipal issued Windows machine.

It's very common for the proprietary software for interfacing with ancient, expensive machines to break after OS upgrades, so they're probably unpatched... you might not even need to burn a 0-day.

No infrastructure should be on the open internet the potential for abuse is incredible. At a minimum a VPN should be used to tunnel all connections back to what ever command and control server exist, leaving equipment visible on the public IP should be a crime if not a felony.

I sometimes wonder how much damage (and potential damage) to US infrastructure exists simply because intelligence-agencies prioritize being able to exploit it globally over fixing it on defense.

The NSA's job is to collect information, not screw with people's water.