In the United States, they hacked a drinking water plant …

Pinellas County, in United States, was targeted last week by a stranger To hack. This Friday, February 5, according to local police, a person managed to infiltrate the computer system that controls the Wastewater treatment plant from the town of Oldsmar, in that county of Florida, and increased levels of sodium hydroxide, better known as “caustic soda”.

The attack lasted for about 5 minutes and was stopped by a plant operator who monitors chemicals added to treat the water – caustic soda is used to control acidity, although this is also ‘a corrosive compound found in household cleaning products – which the weathering noticed. and immediately reversed the damage, said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri.

During these 5 minutes, the hacker changed the amount of sodium hydroxide in the water from 100 parts per million to 11,100. Although this is a dangerous figure, Gualtieri said, “at no time was there a significant negative effect on the treated water” and “it is important to note that the population has never been in dangerEven if the operator had not detected the hack, the official said, it would have taken more than a day for water to enter the water supply.

“The protocols that we have put in place, the monitoring protocols, they work, that’s the good news,” said Oldsmar Mayor Eric Seidel. “Even if they hadn’t detected (the attack), there are redundancies in the system that would have detected the change in the pH level,” he said. As a precaution, it was decided to deactivate the remote access system used in the attack..

In fact, the authorities have opened an investigation, in which the FBI is also involved. So far, no suspects have been identified and it has not been possible to determine whether the hack was carried out from the United States or from another country.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida felt that this attempt to poison the water supply should be treated as a “national security issue”.

How was the attack

At around 8 a.m. on Friday, a plant operator was monitoring the system when he noticed someone was briefly accessing it remotely. At the time, he thought it was his supervisor who did this regularly.

However, around 1:30 p.m. the same day, someone re-entered the system. This time, Gualtieri explained, the operator observed how the hacker, from a distance, went to the software that regulates the water treatment and increased the amount of sodium hydroxide. When the attacker exited the system, the worker immediately corrected the concentration of this product.