AanDriveenbehouden.nl – Everyone is a ‘white-hat’ hacker thanks to Mitsubishi?

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has developed CATSploit utility software for conducting penetration testing. These are tests to prove that a system or device is vulnerable to a real cyber attack. The Japanese company claims to be the first in the world to have such a ‘tool’ to support these experiments.

CATSploit by Mitsubishi automatically generates attack scenarios based on the attacker’s attempted objectives, such as stealing confidential information, to evaluate the effectiveness of such an attack. Using attack scenarios and test results (scores), even inexperienced security engineers can easily perform penetration tests.

ISA/IEC 624433

In recent years, operating systems, such as infrastructure and factory equipment, have become increasingly connected to networks, increasing the risk of disruption by cyber-attacks, such as power outages or shutdowns of public transport. The need to implement security measures in such systems has become urgent. In addition, the need ISA/IEC 624433 security standards for industrial control systems in which penetration and penetration security testing is performed on systems and devices to assess their resistance to cyber attacks, including vulnerabilities due to implementation or configuration errors. Fuzzing tests are used to detect software bugs or vulnerabilities by entering invalid or incorrect data.

Rare and hard to find

Penetration testing is very sophisticated and requires the participation of white hat hackers (ethical hackers) to attack the system or product being tested, but such people, who must have very high skills, are few and far between find them. By highlighting the factors that white hat attackers consider when choosing their attack vectors, Mitsubishi Electric has now developed a penetration testing tool that provides a list of possible attack scenarios and their effectiveness (expressed in numerical symbols). Details of the tool will be presented on December 6 (at 11:00 am) at Black Hat Europe 2023 Arsenal in London.