An Eye on Cyberattacks on Critical Infrastructure
It's still not clear whether infrastructure hackers were behind the recent failure of a water pump near Springfield, Illinois. A pump in the Curran-Gardner Townships Public Water District stopped working after what initially appeared to have been an attack on the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System computers that monitor and control the city’s infrastructure. On November 8, after the systems had seemingly been turned off and on repeatedly, the water pump failed, according to a leaked report, “Public Water District Cyber Intrusion,” compiled by the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center.
The Threat Level blog over at Wired ran a provocative rundown of that initial report, which suggests that hackers with Russian-based IP addresses finagled their way into the water district’s system, also potentially accessing other user information.