Nameless Minerals has found a high-grade vanadium resource in the Northern Territory and developed an open cut mine and associated crushing, milling and beneficiation plant and processing plant.

Vanadium is useful in nuclear reactors, space vehicles, aircraft carriers, superconducting magnets and in batteries to store renewable energy. It’s also rare, hence a potential target of foreign adversaries keen to deny Australia and its allies a strategic advantage.

Nameless Minerals deals with dozens of third-parties who supply services to their mine. Through one of these that has weak security systems, hackers possibly aligned with Iran or Russia manage to penetrate the network. They modify a legitimate software tool, CompuTrace, to be able to modify system memory and use X-Tunnel to access an external command-and-control server.

One day without warning, Nameless’s entire industrial control system is breached. The crushing plant speeds up processing until it exceeds its operating limits and machinery is destroyed. Motors burn out on the milling line. Valves on the beneficiation plant are locked open, flooding the facility and short-circuiting the equipment.

Workers, unable to control the plant, flee to safety.

Nameless has no business continuity plan in place, so damage continues to mount and uncertainty surrounds the company. No one knows if the attack is over or the hackers retain an ability to threaten their operations. They don’t know how to discover the vulnerability or whether it was an internal or external threat. Rebuilding their physical assets, plant and equipment will take months.

The vanadium supply chain is disrupted. Global partners and strategic buyers with long-term contracts are so disappointed with the response from Nameless that they seek other suppliers.

Nameless’s market capitalisation is marked down as analysts calculate the losses and factor in reduced output. Their share price falls dramatically and there is a shareholder revolt at the next AGM. The Board and key executives are voted out. It’s a long way back for a former mining market darling.