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A vigilant employee of the plumbing system of the city of Oldsmar thwarted a sabotage that threatened the health of 15 thousand residents.
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Someone remotely entered the waterworks control computer and added a dangerous amount of sodium hydroxide (lye) to the water, but the worker noticed the deviation in time and manually adjusted the chemical content to normal.
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Small amounts of lye are added to water to reduce acidity. It also helps to avoid clogging of pipes, but at high concentrations can cause irritation of the skin, eyes and oral mucosa, sore throat, temporary hair loss, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
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The hacker was able to briefly increase the liquor content from the usual 100 molecules per million water molecules to 11,100 molecules, that is, more than a hundred times.
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“I am not a chemist, but I can say that if you add such an amount of this substance to drinking water, it will not work well. The main thing is that the harmful effect was insignificant, and there was no threat to people,” said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Galtieri.
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So far, no one has been detained in connection with the incident. It is also unknown whether the hacker acted from the territory of the United States or from abroad.
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Remote access to the computer that controls the water supply is temporarily disabled.
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The system penetration happened on Friday morning. At first, the operator thought that it was his boss who decided to check something. But closer to lunchtime, a second hack happened, and this time the hacker changed the composition of the water. Fortunately, the worker was alert.
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“Attackers all around”
Joe Tydy, BBC correspondent on cyber technology
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Imagine the horror of an employee who sees that the cursor on the computer monitor is moved not by his mouse, but by someone’s invisible hand. And then she opens the program and poisons the water.
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But even worse, this is not the first time this has happened.
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In 2016, the American mobile operator Verizon Wireless reported a similar attack on a water supply in an unnamed city. In 2020, there have been several failed hacks on the systems that control the water supply in Israel.
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The latest incident in Florida will add worry to cybersecurity experts, who have been warning for years that attackers are targeting critical national infrastructure.
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Plumbing, electrical networks, nuclear reactors and vehicles are tested for strength. Not only because their failure can disrupt all normal life, but also because they often use outdated and vulnerable IT systems.
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