Not only is information at risk, so are physical objects like your vehicle and everything in your smart home, from appliances to TVs, nanny cams and home security systems.
Florida water hack shows infrastructure cyber weaknesses businessinsurance.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from businessinsurance.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Feb 12, 2021
When the sheriff of Oldsmar, Fla., held a press conference to discuss a Feb. 5 hack into the water treatment facility that could have poisoned the city’s water supply, many cybersecurity experts stood up and took notice.
The intruder seemed to have breached the plant’s industrial controls via a remote desktop monitoring application and may have taken advantage other cybersecurity weaknesses, such as lax password security and use of an unsupported operating system. That access was used to change chemical controls to dump lye into the city’s drinking water.
On Feb. 11, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center issued a joint advisory outlining how cyber criminals can gain unauthorized access to systems by exploiting desktop-sharing software and end-of-life operating systems, particularly Windows 7, and making recommendations for defending water an