nuclear-news

 Cyber-hackers target UK nuclear waste company RWM.

Radioactive Waste Management says attempt was made to breach the business using LinkedIn

Guardian,   Alex Lawson and Anna Isaac, 1 Jan 2024

Cyber-hackers have targeted the company behind a £50bn project to build a vast underground nuclear waste store in Britain, its developer has said.

Radioactive Waste Management, the company behind the Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) project, has said that hackers unsuccessfully attempted to breach the business using LinkedIn.

RWM is the government-owned entity behind a trio of nuclear bodies that merged last year to create Nuclear Waste Services (NWS). The new body brought together the GDF project, the long-established Low Level Waste Repository in west Cumbria and another body responsible for managing waste to develop a store expected to last 175 years.

In accounts for RWM filed at Companies House, NWS’s chief executive, Corhyn Parr, said of the merger that “we have seen instances of potential exploitation of ownership change through specific attack vectors, predominantly LinkedIn targeting”………………………..

Experts have warned that social media sites are used by hackers to break through security mechanisms in a number of ways. These include creating fake business accounts, deceptive messages to gather information or cause recipients to click on malicious links, as well as directly trying to steal users credentials for other secure logins……………………..

The government is in the process of finding a site for the GDF project, a subterranean network tunnels and vaults designed to house Britain’s highly radioactive nuclear waste. The project is forecast to cost between £20bn and £53bn, and expected to receive its first waste in the 2050s. It echoes similar deep repository projects in Finland and France.

Earlier this year, Allerdale in Cumbria was deemed geologically unsuitable for the facility, leaving two other sites in Cumbria and one on the Lincolnshire coast remaining on the shortlist. NWS is in the process of surveying each site and convincing communities to approve of a development, in the face of local opposition…………………………….

Digital security in the nuclear industry has been in focus since the Guardian revealed a string of problems with cybersecurity at the Sellafield site in Cumbria…………..  https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/31/cyber-hackers-target-uk-nuclear-waste-company-rwm

January 1, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK