Reuters: Hackers try to contaminate Florida town's water supply through computer breach

[Cooked Crack]

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Hackers broke into the computer system of a facility that treats water for about 15,000 people near Tampa, Florida and sought to add a dangerous level of additive to the water supply, the Pinellas County Sheriff said on Monday.

The attempt on Friday was thwarted. The hackers remotely gained access to a software program, named TeamViewer, on the computer of an employee at the facility for the town of Oldsmar to gain control of other systems, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said in an interview.

“The guy was sitting there monitoring the computer as he’s supposed to and all of a sudden he sees a window pop up that the computer has been accessed,” Gualtieri said. “The next thing you know someone is dragging the mouse and clicking around and opening programs and manipulating the system.”

The hackers then increased the amount of sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, being distributed into the water supply. The chemical is typically used in small amounts to control the acidity of water, but at higher levels is dangerous to consume.

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“The amount of sodium hydroxide that got in was minimal and was reversed quickly,” Gualtieri said. The affected water treatment facility is a public utility owned by the town, he explained, which has its own internal IT team. Oldsmar is about 17 miles northwest of Tampa and has about 15,000 residents.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-florida-idUSKBN2A82FV

 

 

 

[Renegade7]

Stuff like this is what keeps me in IT.

 

The SolarWinds hack is a reminder of how badly we overfocused on offense and not defense from a cybersecurity perspective. 

 

But with these kind of stakes as an example, we can't give up.

[China]

Turns out that Florida water treatment facility left the doors wide open for hackers

 

By now, you’ve probably heard the theoretically scary story of how hackers managed to infiltrate the computer systems at a water treatment plant in Oldsmar, Florida and remotely control the chemical levels — but it turns out that description gives the hackers far, far too much credit.

 

The reality? The water treatment plant itself left off-the-shelf remote control software on these critical computers — and apparently never, ever bothered to change the password.

 

An official cybersecurity advisory about the incident from the state of Massachusetts (via Ars Technica) explains that the SCADA control system was accessed via TeamViewer, the kind of remote desktop application an IT administrator might roll out to remotely troubleshoot computers — not something you’d generally want hooked up to a critical system. More importantly, and here I will just quote the Massachusetts report verbatim:

 

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Further, all computers shared the same password for remote access and appeared to be connected directly to the Internet without any type of firewall protection installed.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[PokerPacker]

Ask me if I'm shocked at the abysmal security.

[The Sisko]

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“The amount of sodium hydroxide that got in was minimal and was reversed quickly,” Gualtieri said. The affected water treatment facility is a public utility owned by the town, he explained, which had its own internal IT team. Oldsmar is about 17 miles northwest of Tampa and has about 15,000 residents.

FTFY ...because you know everyone in that dept. was fired. Or at least they deserve to be.😒😒