Cyber Attack on Utility Demonstrates Need To Shift More Hiring Towards Protection

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Champaign, Illinois, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) November 21, 2011 -- “The apparent cyber attack of the control system of the city water utility in Springfield, Illinois, last week that destroyed a pump raises a lot of the concerns many of us have been expressing for some time,” said Dan Bruder president of the water & energy nexus consulting firm Bold Nexus.

A water district employee noticed trouble in the city’s Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System (SCADA) on November 8th. The system kept running incorrectly, resulting in the burnout of a water pump. Forensic evidence indicates that the hackers may have been in the system as early as September, according to the “Public Water District Cyber Intrusion” report, released by the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center on November 10.
The Rumanian-based attack is suspected of stealing usernames and passwords that the vendor maintained for its customers, and then used those credentials to gain remote access to the utility’s network and there is growing concern that the same attack could occur to other utilities.

“It is unknown, at this time, the number of SCADA usernames and passwords acquired from the software company’s database and if any additional SCADA systems have been attacked as a result of this theft,” the report states, according to Joe Weiss, managing partner of Applied Control Solutions, responding to the website Threat-Level after reviewing a copy of the document.

Weiss initially expressed frustration that the information apparently hadn’t been released to other water utilities on his blog so they could be on the lookout for similar attacks, complaining that he could find no evidence of the information in reports distributed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Industrial Control System-Cyber Emergency Response Team or other government and industry security lists. “Consequently, none of the water utilities I have spoken to were aware of it,” he wrote.

“Hopefully, this is a wake-up call redirect more resources and hiring funding to strengthen defenses against all acts of terrorism and vandalism against our water and energy infrastructure. I am determined to make sure that this issue is brought more to the forefront of global and regional water and energy discussions,” explained Bruder, who has worked for years to promote the employment and hiring issues of water and energy companies.

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