Security News
Stories about computer security tend to go viral when they bridge the vast divide between geeks and luddites, and this week's news about a hacker who tried to poison a Florida town's water supply was understandably front-page material. "A supervisor working remotely saw the concentration being changed on his computer screen and immediately reverted it, Gualtieri said. City officials on Monday emphasized that several other safeguards are in place to prevent contaminated water from entering the water supply and said they've disabled the remote-access system used in the attack."
Federal law enforcement is now looking into a cyberattack at a water treatment plant in Oldsmar, FL where someone was able to remotely access systems and add a dangerous amount of chemicals to the town's water supply. On Monday, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri explained during a press conference that an employee at Oldsmar's water treatment facility saw his mouse moving independently of him on Friday morning but thought nothing of it-it's common for people in the field to remotely access systems through their TeamViewer software.
A threat actor hacked into the computer system of the water treatment facility in Oldsmar, Fla., and tried to poison the town's water supply by raising the levels of sodium hydroxide, or lye, in the water supply. Someone remotely accessed the computer system the operator was monitoring that controls chemical levels in the water as well as other operations, he said.
The sheriff of a small city in Florida warned on Monday that hackers had tried to poison its water. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said Oldsmar's water treatment system, which serves roughly 15,000 people, was broken into by someone, via the internet, who had hoped to flood the supply with levels of sodium hydroxide more than 100 times the normal amount.
Hackers successfully infiltrated the computer system controlling a water treatment facility in the U.S. state of Florida and remotely changed a setting that drastically altered the levels of sodium hydroxide in the water. "At no time was there a significant effect on the water being treated, and more importantly the public was never in danger," Sheriff Gualtieri said in a statement.
U.S. law enforcement agencies are investigating a remote compromise of a Florida city's water plant, warning that the hackers tried to poison the water supply serving approximately 15,000 residents. The hack was spotted on February 5th - and neutralized - in real time by staff at the plant that supplies water to Oldsmar, a small city close to Tampa, Florida.
A Tallahassee city ethics officer was arrested and charged with cyberstalking her coworker and former lover, and is now banned by a judge from using the internet for anything besides work, paying bills and her legal defense. Julie Meadows-Keef is accused of cyberstalking Bert Fletcher, the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper reported.
Florida's state police on Monday morning raided the home of coronavirus tracker Rebekah Jones, seizing her electronics as part of a computer hacking investigation. Jones then set up her own COVID-19 dashboard, which frequently reported a higher number of cases than the Department of Health's site.
The teen is a junior at South Miami Senior High School in the Miami-Dade Public Schools system in Florida. The school district said the kid admitted carrying out eight DDoS attacks since the school year began on August 31.
The miscreants also managed to access the Twitter Direct Messages in 36 accounts, and to download Twitter account data for seven accounts. "Increasingly we rely on platforms like Twitter to receive news and other information that is important to our lives," said US Attorney for the Northern District of California David Anderson in the video statement below.