CQR director of technical assurance, Phil Kernick, told CIO Australia that almost all of the SCADA attacks he has investigated are related to malware infections.

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"It's the same type of malware that the Eastern European bad guys are trying to put on your home PC to steal your banking credentials," he said. "If it gets into a control network, it sometimes crashes machines.

"Control network PCs need to be running all the time and not just randomly re-boot."

Kernick said the malware also gets in because of the "porous" inter connection between the control network and the corporate network, staff inserting USB keys into unpatched computers, and contractors connecting their laptop to the network and accidentally unleashing malware into the system.