Foreign Hackers Targeted U.S. Water Plant in Illinois
Foreign hackers broke into a water plant control system in Illinois last week and damaged a water pump in what may be the first reported case of a malicious cyber attack on a critical computer system in the United States, according to an industry expert. On Nov. 8, a municipal water district employee in Illinois noticed problems with the citys water pump control system, and a technician determined the system had been remotely hacked into from a computer located in Russia, said Joe Weiss, an industry security expert who obtained a copy of an Illinois state fusion center report describing the incident. According to the report, hackers apparently broke into a software companys database and retrieved user names and passwords of various control systems that run water plant computer equipment. Using that data, they were able to hack into the plant in Illinois, Weiss said.
The city affected was Springfield, Ill., according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but spokesman Peter Boogaard said officials had not yet determined that the water pump failure was caused by a cyber-attack. DHS and the FBI are gathering facts surrounding the report of a water pump failure in Springfield Illinois. At this time there is no credible corroborated data that indicates a risk to critical infrastructure entities or a threat to public safety, he said.
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