On November 8, a municipal water employee in Illinois noticed problems with the city's water pump control system, and a technician determined the system had been remotely hacked into from a computer in Russia, said Joe Weiss, an industry security expert who obtained a copy of an Illinois government report on the incident. The city affected was Springfield, according to the US Department of Homeland Security.
Problems with the system had been observed for two to three months and recently the system ''would power on and off, resulting in the burnout of a water pump'', the November 10 report from the statewide terrorism and intelligence centre stated, according to Mr Weiss. ''This is a big deal,'' he said.The report said it was unknown how many other systems might be affected.
It said hackers apparently broke into a software company's database and retrieved usernames and passwords of various control systems that run water plant computer equipment.
Using that data, they were able to hack into the Illinois plant, Mr Weiss said.
It is not the first time that two-step technique - hack into a security company in order to gain the keys to enter other companies or entities - has been detected.
Earlier this year, hackers believed to be working from China stole sensitive data that provides secure remote computer access to government agencies, defence contractors and other companies around the world.
The Department of Homeland Security said it and the FBI were investigating the Illinois incident.
''At this time there is no credible corroborated data that indicates a risk to critical infrastructure entities or a threat to public safety,'' spokesman Peter Boogaard said.
According to the report obtained by Mr Weiss, the network intrusion of the software company ''is the same method of attack recently used against a Massachusetts Institute of Technology server'' used to ''aid and initiate an attack on other websites''.more information...
Source: http://www.smh.com.au/
No comments:
Post a Comment