ITS TOO EASY TO POISON ENTIRE CITIES
An attacker on 5th of February Friday gained access to the water treatment plant of the city of Oldsmar, Florida. The attacker gained remote access to the system wherein they tried to increase the quantity of Sodium Hydroxide in the water from 100 parts per million to 11,000 parts per million. At the same time, the attack was caught when an employee noticed the cursor’s movement on the screen, making the changes a somewhat amateur move on the attacker’s part. However, this does shed light on the critical problem faced by significant industries everywhere.
During the investigation, it was found that the water treatment plant system was operating Microsoft Windows 7 operating system, whose support was discontinued by Microsoft in January 2020. With the discontinuation of the support for Microsoft’s Windows 7, security patches and updates were no longer provided by Microsoft. This increases the vulnerability of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system as new vulnerabilities found are not fixed.
It was further found that they used to access the system remotely using TeamViewer Software to manage their systems remotely without using a firewall or any other security system, to prevent systems from being accessed remotely by unauthorized users with the necessary access credentials. It was also found that the password used to access the systems remotely was the same for every system.
While it is well known that the budget is not unlimited and such government plants work on a limited budget, funds are not always available for cybersecurity. Water treatment plants fall under the nation’s critical infrastructure and therefore need to be secured against any types of attacks, including protection against cyber-attacks. Even essential awareness about cybersecurity would have prevented such an amateur attack like using strong individual passwords.
Such attacks on countries’ critical infrastructure are not unique. However, they have started to happen with alarming frequencies worldwide, like the attack on the Ukrainian power grid in 2015 and at least two Israeli water treatment plants last year. These attacks paint a disturbing picture of the increase in sophistication of attacks and the available tools. While cybersecurity practitioners are playing catch up, fighting against the lack of awareness of people in charge in infrastructure that have only recently been connected to the internet and therefore becoming vulnerable to such threats.
The risk factor of attacking such systems is also higher than traditional IT systems because if the IT infrastructure is attacked, your data may be compromised at worst. While bad and can halt businesses for days or weeks, it is nothing compared to the attacks on the OT environments where the attackers can manipulate physical devices, thereby can cause damage to life and property, completely shutting down businesses permanently. This makes such systems an attractive target for attackers as the potential payout is much greater than traditional IT systems and much easier to compromise. Therefore, it is pretty essential to secure such systems properly.
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