You’ll suppose that one thing as vital as a city or county’s consuming water provide could be well-protected — you realize, like how America’s nuclear armament was remoted from the web and even relied on eight-inch floppy disks till only in the near past? And but we’ve now had two situations the place somebody was in a position to remotely log right into a municipal water provide in a approach that would have critically harmed individuals.
Keep in mind the story of the Florida water therapy facility the place somebody was in a position to change the chemical ranges? One thing related occurred in March 2019 in Kansas’ Ellsworth County, too, the place 22-year-old Wyatt Travnichek now stands accused of shutting down the area’s water cleansing system “with the intention of harming” it, in response to a statement from the Department of Justice.
The wildest half is that in each circumstances, staff at these water sources left themselves vast open to tampering — they put in the distant entry software program themselves so staff might log in to observe the methods! That’s what Travnichek was employed to do in Kansas, and authorities aren’t even accusing him of “hacking” the system in their indictment. He merely “logged in remotely” months after he left the job, started shutting issues down, and is now going through as much as 20 years in jail.
That sounds remarkably just like what occurred in Florida, the place the water therapy plant by no means bothered to alter the password and even take away an previous piece of distant management software program after they’d put in a more moderen one.
Perhaps we must always cease doing that. President Joe Biden is at present making an attempt to push a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, together with billions to ship secure water and substitute lead pipes, amongst different hazards. To maintain the water secure, we additionally must maintain the water safe.
Cyberscoop spoke to a customer support rep on the Kansas water utility, who claimed the incident didn’t hurt residents’ consuming water.
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