Image @Wikipedia
By Jim Finkle – Federal investigators are looking into a report that hackers managed to remotely shut down a utility’s water pump in central Illinois last week, in what could be the first known foreign cyber attack on a U.S. industrial system.
The November 8 incident was described in a one-page report from the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center, according to Joe Weiss, a prominent expert on protecting infrastructure from cyber attacks. more> http://is.gd/Cs05NO
Related articles
- Apparent cyberattack destroys pump at Ill. water utility, Jaikumar Vijayan, Computerworld/Network World
- Feds investigating Illinois ‘pump failure’ as possible cyber attack (cnn.com)
- US water facility ‘was shut down by hackers’ (telegraph.co.uk)
- Russian Cyberattack on Illinois Water Plant (fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com)
- Russian Hackers Breach Central Illinois Water System (businessinsider.com)
What I find interesting is the denial by the Department of Homeland Security that in incident occurred. This is telling in of itself. However, regardless of the validity of this occurrence, the threat to SCADA systems is real, the pace in which these critical infrastructure providers move to protect them at a crawls pace. If you don’t know what SCADA is all about, checkout this video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBmlKOMu3aU Everyone should be concerned, we should be holding our utilities (public and private) accountable.
Kenf
http://www.kmbl.us