Our Lack of Digital Defenses Is an Emergency

[Grumpy]

Interesting artilce

A recent story from Florida should direct policymakers’ attention to a glaring strategic problem in American defense. In the city of Oldsmar, a small community in the Tampa metro area, an unknown hacker gained access to the chemical controls of the municipal water treatment system. Fortunately, an operator at the facility observed the breach in real time, watching as the intruder set the level of sodium hydroxide, commonly known as lye, to 100 times its normal level. The operator was able to immediately undo the change, so no one was harmed.


But what if that instant detection hadn’t happened? As of this writing, nothing is known about the source of the attack. And it wasn’t “just 'Oh, we're putting a little bit of chlorine or a little bit of fluoride, or a little bit of something,'” said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri.

Our Lack of Digital Defenses Is an Emergency

A recent story from Florida should direct policymakers’ attention to a glaring strategic problem in American defense. In the city of Oldsmar, a small community in the Tampa metro area,

www.realclearworld.com

 

[Kyle]

The schmucks in charge never want to invest in security until after a disaster strikes.

And even then they're always looking for cheapest, not most effective way to secure it.

 

[stgislander]

Supposedly the hacker got in via TeamViewer. Management at the water plant used it to monitor what was going on.

I use TeamViewer all the time to access our control systems worldwide for troubleshooting. Fortunately for me, there are no physical connections between our control system and the Internet. Access is gained using a remote laptop that is connected to the Internet. After connecting to the laptop, I Remote Desktop into our control system.

I do notice the TeamViewer leaves a process running even after it is shutdown. I usually go back and manually kill it.