1-888-643-2217 Email ABEX
Keeping you updated

Monthly Archives: August 2014

Helpful tips for reducing risk of boiler accidents

explosionBoiler accidents can be avoided with proper care and maintenance. Reduce your risk of a boiler accident by understanding the common hazards.

Common Boiler Hazards

The most common boiler hazards that lead to accidents are low water levels, excessive pressure and a failure to purge combustible gases from the firebox before ignition. These hazards can cause serious boiler accidents like explosions or fire.

Low water levels in a boiler are caused by improperly functioning low water cut-offs. Water levels that are too low can cause the boiler to buckle or deform, melt down or even explode—all of which can generate severe damage to the boiler and/or to the building.

Excessive pressure in a boiler can also lead to explosions. This occurs when pressure is allowed to build in the boiler. Boiler explosions are very dangerous and can completely destroy buildings.

Fuel-related accidents, like fires and explosions, are also common and occur when combustible gases are not purged from the firebox. Leaking fuel valves can also cause this kind of accident.

Boiler Accident Prevention

Routine maintenance can generally be done by the boiler operator to avoid these devastating accidents. But there are circumstances when a trained professional is needed. These include:

  • Leaking safety and/or safety relief valves
  • Contaminated feed water
  • Steam leaks (in steam boilers)
  • High stack temperatures (exceeding 177° C)
  • Insufficient heat for the building
  • Condensation dripping down the stack or out of the front of the boiler
  • Constant resetting of controllers and safety devices
  • Ongoing routine maintenance and inspection is the best way to prevent a boiler accident. Use a checklist when inspecting a boiler to ensure you’re inspecting it thoroughly.

 

© 2014 Zywave, Inc. All rights reserved.


Hackers can tap USB devices

Source: mobile.reuters.com

USB Flash DriveUSB devices such as keyboards, thumb-drives and mice can be used to hack into personal computers in a potential new class of attacks that evade all known security protections, a top computer researcher revealed on Thursday.

Karsten Nohl, chief scientist with Berlin’s SR Labs, noted that hackers could load malicious software onto tiny, low-cost computer chips that control functions of USB devices but which have no built-in shields against tampering with their code.

“You cannot tell where the virus came from. It is almost like a magic trick,” said Nohl, whose research firm is known for uncovering major flaws in mobile phone technology.

The finding shows that bugs in software used to run tiny electronics components that are invisible to the average computer user can be extremely dangerous when hackers figure out how to exploit them. Security researchers have increasingly turned their attention to uncovering such flaws.

Nohl said his firm has performed attacks by writing malicious code onto USB control chips used in thumb drives and smartphones. Once the USB device is attached to a computer, the malicious software can log keystrokes, spy on communications and destroy data, he said.

Computers do not detect the infections when tainted devices are inserted because anti-virus programs are only designed to scan for software written onto memory and do not scan the “firmware” that controls the functioning of those devices, he said.

Nohl and Jakob Lell, a security researcher at SR Labs, will describe their attack method at next week’s Black Hat hacking conference in Las Vegas, in a presentation titled: “Bad USB – On Accessories that Turn Evil.”

Thousands of security professionals gather at the annual conference to hear about the latest hacking techniques, including ones that threaten the security of business computers, consumer electronics and critical infrastructure.

Nohl said he would not be surprised if intelligence agencies, like the National Security Agency, have already figured out how to launch attacks using this technique.

Last year, he presented research at Black Hat on breakthrough methods for remotely attacking SIM cards on mobile phones. In December, documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden demonstrated that the U.S. spy agency was using a similar technique for surveillance, which it called “Monkey Calendar.”

An NSA spokeswoman declined to comment.

SR Labs tested the technique by infecting controller chips made by major Taiwanese manufacturer, Phison Electronics Corp, and placing them in USB memory drives and smartphones running Google Inc’s Android operating system.

Alex Chiu, an attorney with Phison, told Reuters via email that Nohl had contacted the company about his research in May.

“Mr. Nohl did not offer detailed analysis together with work product to prove his finding,” Chiu said. “Phison does not have ground to comment (on) his allegation.”

Chiu said that “from Phison’s reasonable knowledge and belief, it is hardly possible to rewrite Phison’s controller firmware without accessing our confidential information.”

Similar chips are made by Silicon Motion Technology Corp and Alcor Micro Corp. Nohl said his firm did not test devices with chips from those manufacturers.

Google did not respond to requests for comment. Officials with Silicon Motion and Alcor Micro could not immediately be reached.

Nohl believed hackers would have a “high chance” of corrupting other kinds of controller chips besides those made by Phison, because their manufacturers are not required to secure software. He said those chips, once infected, could be used to infect mice, keyboards and other devices that connect via USB.

“The sky is the limit. You can do anything at all,” he said.

In his tests, Nohl said he was able to gain remote access to a computer by having the USB instruct the computer to download a malicious program with instructions that the PC believed were coming from a keyboard. He was also able to change what are known as DNS network settings on a computer, essentially instructing the machine to route Internet traffic through malicious servers.

Once a computer is infected, it could be programmed to infect all USB devices that are subsequently attached to it, which would then corrupt machines that they contact.

“Now all of your USB devices are infected. It becomes self-propagating and extremely persistent,” Nohl said. “You can never remove it.”

Christof Paar, a professor of electrical engineering at Germany’s University of Bochum who reviewed the findings, said he believed the new research would prompt others to take a closer look at USB technology, and potentially lead to the discovery of more bugs. He urged manufacturers to improve protection of their chips to thwart attacks.

“The manufacturer should make it much harder to change the software that runs on a USB stick,” Paar said.


Blog

FOLLOW OUR BLOG

Receive notifications of new posts automatically.



ABEX - AFFILIATED BROKERS EXCHANGE IS ON FACEBOOK.

Like us on Facebook

Connect with us on LinkedIn