Once again, someone tampered with an entire drinking water supply via the internet
You would think that something as critical as a town or county’s drinking water supply would be well-protected — you know, like how America’s nuclear armament was isolated from the internet and even relied on eight-inch floppy disks until just recently? And yet we’ve now had two instances where someone was able to remotely log into a municipal water supply in a way that could have seriously harmed people.
Remember the story of the Florida water treatment facility where someone was able to change the chemical levels? Something similar happened in March 2019 in Kansas’ Ellsworth County, too, where 22-year-old Wyatt Travnichek now stands accused of shutting down the region’s water cleaning system “with the intention of harming” it, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.
The wildest part is that in both cases, workers at these water resources left themselves wide open to tampering — they installed the remote access software themselves so employees could log in to monitor the systems! That’s what Travnichek was hired to do in Kansas, and authorities aren’t even accusing him of “hacking” the system in their indictment. He simply “logged in remotely” months after he left the job, began shutting things down, and is now facing up to 20 years in prison.
That sounds remarkably similar to what happened in Florida, where the water treatment plant never bothered to change the password or even remove an old piece of remote control software after they’d installed a newer one.
Maybe we should stop doing that. President Joe Biden is currently trying to push a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, including billions to deliver safe water and replace lead pipes, among other hazards. To keep the water safe, we also need to keep the water secure.
Cyberscoop spoke to a customer service rep at the Kansas water utility, who claimed the incident didn’t harm residents’ drinking water.
You would think that something as critical as a town or county’s drinking water supply would be well-protected — you know, like how America’s nuclear armament was isolated from the internet and even relied on eight-inch floppy disks until just recently? And yet we’ve now had two instances where someone…
Recent Posts
- Apple’s latest AirPods Pro with USB-C have returned to their all-time low
- Hisense’s new 5,000 nits mini-LED TV is so bright you may need to wear shades
- The drinking fountain button is tragically misunderstood
- Google fired a software engineer over an anti-war demonstration — he says he wasn’t even protesting
- Amazon expands enterprise AI play with wider availability of its Q chatbot
Archives
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- December 2011