Transient Cyber Asset

Adversaries may target devices that are transient across ICS networks and external networks. Normally, transient assets are brought into an environment by authorized personnel and do not remain in that environment on a permanent basis. (Citation: North American Electric Reliability Corporation June 2021) Transient assets are commonly needed to support management functions and may be more common in systems where a remotely managed asset is not feasible, external connections for remote access do not exist, or 3rd party contractor/vendor access is required. Adversaries may take advantage of transient assets in different ways. For instance, adversaries may target a transient asset when it is connected to an external network and then leverage its trusted access in another environment to launch an attack. They may also take advantage of installed applications and libraries that are used by legitimate end-users to interact with control system devices. Transient assets, in some cases, may not be deployed with a secure configuration leading to weaknesses that could allow an adversary to propagate malicious executable code, e.g., the transient asset may be infected by malware and when connected to an ICS environment the malware propagates onto other systems.

Linked Issues

Issuelinks
Linktype	Issue
is related to	Techniques
is related to	Workstation
is blocked by	Encrypt Sensitive Information
is blocked by	Audit
is blocked by	Antivirus/Antimalware
is blocked by	Network Segmentation
is blocked by	Update Software
is blocked by	Detection of Transient Cyber Asset

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