Ken Roach
Lifetime Supporting Member + Moderator
There has been reporting in the past day of an intentional intrusion into a drinking water treatment plant in Florida, near Tampa Bay, in which an intruder intentionally increased the sodium hydroxide pump to 100x its normal setting, which would have made the water dangerously alkaline if it had not been caught quickly.
Because the general-interest press likes to hype up the (real) spectre of terrorist attacks against water infrastructure, it's being called a control system "hack", and there's been talk of powerful international cyber weapons.
The details I've been able to see tell a much simpler technical story: the intruder used a remote desktop tool to access the SCADA computer, and the supervising engineer literally watched them use the mouse and keyboard to enter a higher setpoint for the NaOH dose pump.
It still could have been a nefarious international terrorist intent on poisoning the Super Bowl. But the reporting, both from national and international news outlets and the Tampa Bay Times, is that the plant had an ordinary remote access system, which they used regularly.
Evidently the hacker accessed the system twice: the first time, an operator assumed the remote access was his supervisor working from home.
'Scuse me while I go change my remote access credentials...
Because the general-interest press likes to hype up the (real) spectre of terrorist attacks against water infrastructure, it's being called a control system "hack", and there's been talk of powerful international cyber weapons.
The details I've been able to see tell a much simpler technical story: the intruder used a remote desktop tool to access the SCADA computer, and the supervising engineer literally watched them use the mouse and keyboard to enter a higher setpoint for the NaOH dose pump.
It still could have been a nefarious international terrorist intent on poisoning the Super Bowl. But the reporting, both from national and international news outlets and the Tampa Bay Times, is that the plant had an ordinary remote access system, which they used regularly.
Evidently the hacker accessed the system twice: the first time, an operator assumed the remote access was his supervisor working from home.
'Scuse me while I go change my remote access credentials...