Pinellas County Sheriff said a hacker broke into the computer formula of a water-treating facility of another 15,000 people in the city of Oldsmar, near Tampa, Florida, and sought to charge a damaging uploaditive point to the water supply.
Friday’s attempt was unsuccessful because installation staff were able to thwart the hacker who had received remote access to TeamViewer software on a facility worker’s computer to take other systems, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said in an interview.
The hacker then increases the amount of sodium hydroxide, also known as laundry, distributed in the water supply. The chemical is regularly used in small amounts to increase water acidity, but it is harmful to consume it at higher levels.
“The guy who’s sitting there looking at the PC as he intended and suddenly sees a window that seems to indicate that the PC has been accessed,” Gualtieri said. “The next thing you know, someone slides the mouse and clicks and opens systems and manipulates the system. “
The factory worker alerted his employer, who called the sheriff. The water treatment facility was able to temporarily oppose the control, which had minimal impact.
The sheriff said the intruder was active for three to five minutes. When they left, the plant operator promptly restored the right chemical mixture, he said.
To date, no arrests have been made. The FBI and secret service were called to assist in an investigation.
Gualtieri said he didn’t know who was to blame for the cyberattack.
“The vital thing is to warn everyone, ” he said. It will be a call for attention. “
Oldsmar Mayor Eric Seidel said at a news convention on Monday that the affected water remedy facility had also put in position other controls that would have prevented a harmful amount of dirty laundry from entering the inadvertent water supply.
“The amount of sodium hydroxide that penetrated was minimal and quickly reversed,” Gualtieri said. The affected water treatment facility is a city-owned public application, he said, that it has its own internal IT team.
Experts say water and other municipal systems are potentially simple targets for hackers, as local government IT infrastructure tends to lack sufficient funds.
Robert M Lee, executive director of Dragos Security and a vulnerability expert in commercial control systems, said remote access to commercial control systems, such as running water treatment plants, has become increasingly common.
“As industries become increasingly digitally connected, we will continue to see that more states and criminals are targeting those sites to have an effect on society,” Lee said.
The leading cybersecurity company FireEye has attributed an increase in hacking attempts that it has noticed over the following year, basically that novices should be more informed about remotely available trading systems.
Many patients appear to have been arbitrarily decided and no serious harm has been caused in either case, in a component due to safety mechanisms and professional supervision, FireEye analyst Daniel Kapellmann Zafra said in a statement.
“While the (Oldsmar) incident doesn’t seem to be complex, it underscores the need for cybersecurity features in the water and wastewater sector,” he said.
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