DEF CON 33 - Operational Twilight: APTs, OT, & geopolitics of a dying climate - Cybelle Oliveira
Source: YouTube · DEFCONConference · published Oct 10, 2025 · 23:49
Revised Summary: Climate Threat Intelligence (CTI) – The Nexus of Climate, Cybersecurity, and Geopolitical Threats
Speaker: Sibel, Founder of Lavilla Hacker (focused on Latin America and Brazil)
Core Message: The convergence of climate change, geopolitical conflicts, and cyber warfare has created an unprecedented threat landscape where nation-state APT groups are increasingly targeting climate-critical infrastructure during extreme weather events, exploiting legacy OT systems to cause physical damage and societal disruption.
Key Insights from the Presentation:
Emerging Threat Landscape
- The global cyber landscape is being shaped by geopolitical conflicts worldwide
- Increasing cyber operations by nation-state hackers targeting digitalized infrastructure
- Legacy OT systems combined with escalating geopolitical tensions have created the worst threat landscape ever seen
- Confirmed climate infrastructure incidents: approximately 3 per week, with 89% causing real physical damage, and 67% occurring during extreme weather events
Alarming Statistics
- 4.2 million attacks on critical infrastructure in recent years (300% increase)
- Nearly 5,000 critical infrastructure organizations have reported cyber incidents to the FBI (with many more unreported)
- Approximately 13 attacks per second against critical infrastructure
- Expanding attack surface includes 50 billion connected environmental devices (e.g., solar panels, water treatment systems)
Nation-State APT Activity
- 12 known nation-state APT groups actively targeting climate infrastructure
- Groups linked to Russia, Ukraine, China, and North Korea developing environmental warfare doctrines
- Traditional objectives include economic disruption, political destabilization, and military advantage
- Attacks are strategically timed to exploit extreme weather conditions and maximize impact
Technical Vulnerabilities
- Legacy protoc
Generate CPE Credits
Generate a professional CPE document from this video's transcript.
Estimated credit: 0.5 CPE hours
Estimate uses the video runtime (1 hour ≈ 1 CPE, rounded to the nearest 0.5, minimum 0.5, maximum 2.0). The final amount can be lower after review, never higher.
Topic: Cybersecurity. Commonly maps to: Security and Risk Management, Security Operations. Exact CISSP domains are assigned during generation.
Free account. One generation at a time, with a daily limit.
CPEBuddy is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by ISC2, ISACA, or any certification body. Exports are formatted for common CPE submissions; acceptance is at your certification body's discretion.
Transcript Preview
First 800 characters of the transcript
Good afternoon. Thank you to be here. I'm a little bit nervous, of course. So, if I forget some words in English. Oh, I can speak in Spanish or Portuguese. I don't know. Or you can correct me. So, my name is Sibel. I'm from Brazil. I'm a city. I researched. I love cat. Please. Something like me, but I don't have green eye. And I'm one of the founders of Lavilla Hacker. Here we are focused on Brazilians and people from Latin America mainly. We speak in Portuguese and Spanish but if you speak English okay you are welcome too. Okay. So in this talk I'm start to de develop this new project you know uh CTI of course thread intelligence think uh the intersection of climate because we are having you know this don't don't look like normal the climate right now um geopolitics and apt attacks this i…