Hacker Tried to Poison Florida Town’s Water Supply, Police Say

In July 2020, citizens of Oldsmar, Florida, pointed out that they were being dramatically overcharged for their water use, which the city government said was due to a shortage of city employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Police in the western Florida town of Oldsmar on Monday claimed that a hacker had attempted to poison the city’s water supply on Friday by releasing a toxic chemical.

According to Gualtieri, a plant worker noticed on Friday that his work station had been remotely accessed by someone who temporarily managed to increase the amount of sodium hydroxide in the water supply by a factor of over 100. The corrosive compound, better known as lye, is a common degreaser but is also used in small quantities at the city’s water treatment center to control acidity.

“The protocols that we have in place, monitoring protocols, they work – that’s the good news,” said the Oldsmar mayor, Eric Seidel, at the presser. “Even had they not caught them, there’s redundancies in the system that would have caught the change in the pH level.”

The news comes amid an investigation of a massive hacking attack of US government and corporate networks enabled by the compromising of SolarWinds’ Orion software. Last month, several US intelligence agencies claimed in a joint statement that the attack was “likely Russian in origin.” The Kremlin has denied responsibility, attributing the claim to anti-Russian bias.

Sourse: sputniknews.com