Hackers are now infiltrating the computer system that works for the water treatment facility for the city of Florida, Oldsmar, and remotely update the setting and increase the concentration of Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH), which is also known as caustic soda.

On 8th Feb 2021, Pinellas County Sheriff said that the operator was managed to control the manipulation and restored the concentration back to its level, and control the damage. Sodium Hydroxide is generally found in household cleaners, but it is very dangerous if someone misuses it and increase the concentration. Whereas NaOH is also used for the water treatment facilities to adjust the pH of the water and for removing heavy metals from it.

What Happened Exactly?

The water treatment facility which supplies water to the city of Oldsmar and Florida is been hacked by unknown suspects on 5th February with the remote control that occurs from 8:00 am to 1:30 pm. The hackers increased the amount of sodium hydroxide from 100 parts-per-million to 11,100 parts-per-million using the tool named TeamViewer, which is used to establish a remote connection and resolve the system problems located at other locations.

After some time at 1:30 p.m, the plant operator discovered that a remote connection is increasing the level of sodium and infect the water.

It is not founded yet that the hack was conducted from the United States or outside the country. Law enforcement agencies are working on it and they will following the best methods to catch the hacker.

The attacker hacked the TeamViewer and take over to the system of water plan and underscores the need while securing the access with multi-factor authentication and blocks other systems.

Whereas experts also say that the manual identify program is installed on the hosts and those are very critical to the operator workstations such as TeamViewer or VNC. While accessing it host-by-host is not a practical task but it is very critical.

The hacker who is behind this attack will spend about 3-5 minutes inside the system and then they will be able to update the NaOH concentration. This change was immediately seen by the operator and he took quick actions to revert it and save the people’s lives.

Summing-up

These types of attacks have happened multiple times over the years. The oldest ones that are in attendance will result from 2000 at a wastewater treatment resolution in Australia and this was the inside job. An employee was responsible for that who steal the credentials and gain the access code to the SCADA controller and release 800,000 liters of untreated sewage water into the waterways of the city.

After that in 2011, an attacker called as prof was reacted to a DHS report was about the water pump failure in Springfield Illinois and the hacker interlinked the screenshots that display that they had access to the wastewater of the treatment plant in South Houston.

Then in 2016, Verizon was reported in its Data Breach that shows that the attacker was able to steal the data of a water company that had its IT network that was running outdated and they also used the old hardware equipment.