The Cyber Attack Resulted in the Burnout of a Water Pump

A cyber strike launched from outside the US has hit a public water system in Illinois, an expert on infrastructure control systems says. Hacker ... the Twitter profile picture of the hacker who says he compromised a Texas water plant and others. The Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Centre disclosed the cyber assault on a public water facility outside the city of Springfield last week but attackers gained access to the system months earlier, Mr Weiss said.

The network breach was exposed after cyber intruders burned out a pump. SCADA software is used around the world to control machines in industrial facilities. Meanwhile, a hacker has told the tech website CNET he hacked into a South Houston water utility to show it can easily be done, after officials downplayed the Illinois cyber attack. The hacker, using the alias ''pr0f'', said he has hacked other SCADA systems, too. The attack happened November 8 at a water plant in Springfield, Illinois. A report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the water pump at the Curran-Gardener Township Public Water District would power on and off.

The remote cyber attack resulted in the burnout of a water pump. According to the report, hackers apparently broke into a software company's database and retrieved user names and passwords of various control systems that run water plant computer equipment. Foreign hackers may have targeted an Illinois water plant last week, causing a pump to burn out and fail, according to a preliminary investigation. The report blamed the attack on someone using a Russian IP address. Federal investigators are looking into a report that hackers managed to remotely shut down a utility's water pump in central Illinois last week, in what could be the first known foreign cyber attack on a U.S. industrial system.

The Nov. 8 incident was described in a one-page report from the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center, according to Joe Weiss, a prominent expert on protecting infrastructure from cyber attacks. The attackers obtained access to the network of a water utility in a rural community west of the state capital Springfield with credentials stolen from a company that makes software used to control industrial systems, according to the account obtained by Weiss. SCADA SECURITY

Cyber security experts said that the reported attack highlights the risk that attackers can break into what is known as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. They are highly specialized computer systems that control critical infrastructure -- from water treatment facilities, chemicals plants and nuclear reactors to gas pipelines, dams and switches on train lines.

The issue of securing SCADA systems from cyber attacks made international headlines last year after the mysterious Stuxnet virus attacked a centrifuge at a uranium enrichment facility in Iran. ILLINOIS ATTACK
Several media reports identified the location of the attack as Springfield. "It came through a software system that's used to remotely access the pumps," he said. The district serves some 2,200 customers in a rural district West of Springfield. OTHER ATTACKS?

"An information technology services and computer repair company checked the computer logs of the system and determined the computer had been hacked into from a computer located in Russia." Workers at the targeted utility in central Illinois on Nov. 8 noticed problems with SCADA systems which manages the water supply system, and discovered that a water pump had been damaged, said Weiss, managing partner of Applied Control Solutions in Cupertino, California.