This is some seriously scary stuff. Evil as fuck too.
“On Monday officials from Pinellas County in Florida announced that an unidentified hacker remotely gained access to a panel that controls the City of Oldsmar’s water treatment system, and changed a setting that would have drastically increased the amount of sodium hydroxide in the water supply.”
I won’t lie, the very first thing that popped into my mind seeing that headline was this:
Jesus, God. They need to catch this guy and not only charge him with attempted murder, but put him up on terrorism charges.
The article doesn’t say how likely the hack would work. Just setting a value like that doesn’t mean that the machinery can follow through. And I assume that water quality monitors would quickly sound an alarm.
A friend worked at the local Lake Michigan water treatment plant. The inlet goes quite far from shore to get less turbid water.
He had a telescope in his office aimed at water above the pipe. One day people where scuba diving in the area. He called the Coast Guard and they responded with visible Ar15s, to get the people to move.
They were very worried about terrorism.
Side note, during Winter storms the lake can get so churned up that the water can’t be used. They sweat bullets and hope the water clears up before the water towers all drain down.
They stop pumping water and the sewage treatment plant goes down, and the coal fired power plant goes down, etc.
Just because the gun jams doesn’t mean the shooter doesn’t have intent.
From the article:
“The intruder exited the system, and the plant operator immediately reduced the level back to the appropriate amount of one hundred,” Gualtieri added. Gualtieri said that steps were taken to “stop further remote access to the system” and that there are other safeguards to protect the water integrity in place.
That is comforting.
Although it’s just the kind of thing that an official should say whether it’s true or not.
Totally agree. The hacker should be prosecuted as I’d the plan could succeed.
ISWYDT!
My bolding. Apparently there is plenty of remote access to a lot of critical infrastructure systems in the USA: water, electricity…all of it. Hackable as heck.
We’ve been lucky so far. Can we count on being lucky forever?
Hacking into water supplies was something I read in a James Patterson book
Damn I wish that was on purpose.
I pHeel pHoolish.
It was subconsciously on purpose. 
?
I have read how industrial plcs were designed with no consideration of nefarious individuals.
No security provisions at all. If you have the Allen Bradly software and access to the controller you can do as you please.i
To be clear: this didn’t happen in Florida City, it happened in a Florida city.
I’m curious: how far offshore do they go to get this water?
Before he was finally caught, one of medical serial killer Michael Swango’s jobs was at a water treatment plant. He was fired for unrelated reasons before he could wreak any havoc, water quality-wise.
I will try to contact the person and get back to you.
My memory is a mile.
I knew that Milwaukee drew their water source from a significant distance into Lake Michigan, so it would make sense that Chicago would probably go even farther.
It’s official, everyone’s losing their damn minds lately.
COULD the concentration have actually gotten to seriously dangerous, assuming other safeguards also failed? Seems like it would take vast quantities to reach that point.