If there is ever a story to validate the reduction of spending in the
intelligence community, this would be it……….
Exclusive: Comedy of Errors Led to False ‘Water-Pump Hack’ Report
It was the broken water pump heard ’round the world.
Cyberwar watchers took notice this month when a leaked intelligence memo claimed Russian hackers had remotely destroyed a water pump at an Illinois utility. The report spawned dozens of sensational stories characterizing it as the first-ever reported destruction of U.S. infrastructure by a hacker. Some described it as America’s very own Stuxnet attack.
Except, it turns out, it wasn’t. Within a week of the report’s release, DHS bluntly contradicted the memo, saying that it could find no evidence that a hack occurred. In truth, the water pump simply burned out, as pumps are wont to do, and a government-funded intelligence center incorrectly linked the failure to an internet connection from a Russian IP address months earlier.
Read full article with two photos.
More reporting on this event, with some detail showing the lack of “intelligence” within this intelligence activity…….
America's critical infrastructure security response system is broken
Following SCADA water utility ‘hack', is the reporting system in need of re-thinking?
By Ellen Messmer | Network World US | Published: 16:01, 02 December 2011
The flap over the reported water utility hack in Illinois begs the question: Is the reporting system that the US has set up to identify cyberattacks on critical infrastructure broken and in need of re-thinking?
