breached plant employees used same teamviewer

The FBI also announced that it is investigating two recent attempted cyber attacks on two different water treatment facilities in Pennsylvania. An unknown hacker used old remote login credentials that had not been disabled to access the city’s water supply and attempt to raise the levels of cleaning agent in it to a dangerous degree. The case came to public attention when federal prosecutors filed a grand jury indictment against the former employee in early 2021, just as the city of Oldsmar in Florida suffered a similar cyber attack. A former employee responsible for after-hours security used their remote login credentials, which had apparently not been disabled when they resigned, to shut off the cleaning and disinfecting systems used to sanitize drinking water.

Cyber attacks demonstrate weak network security, strong physical failsafesĬoncerns about the security of the country’s water supply began with a 2019 cyber attack on the Post Rock Rural Water District in Ellsworth, Kansas. While it is sometimes worryingly easy for hackers to get into these systems, all of these incidents have demonstrated that bypassing mechanical failsafe measures once inside is a much tougher proposition for would-be hackers.

Breached plant employees used same teamviewer