Police say an attempt to contaminate a Florida city ‘s water supply with sodium hydroxide failed, despite a hacker gaining remote access to the local water treatment plant’ s computer system.
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Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said during a news conference on Monday that a worker at the Oldsmar water treatment plant plant first noticed unusual activity on his computer system at 8 am Friday , when a hacker accessed the system for a brief period.
At around 1:30 pm, a hacker accessed the system again, taking control of the mouse and directing it to the software that controls the water treatment. The hacker then briefly increased the amount of sodium hydroxide from 100 parts per million to 11,100 parts per million.
Sodium hydroxide, also known as caustic soda, is the main ingredient in liquid drain cleaners. It is also used to control the acidity of water and remove metals from drinking water in treatment plants.
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After the hacker left the system, a factory employee was able to intervene and reverse the change.
“As the operator noticed the increase and immediately lowered it, there was never a significant adverse effect on the treated water,” said Gualtieri. “It is important to note that the public was never in danger.”
Gualtieri noted that, even if the worker did not intervene immediately, it would take between 24 and 36 hours to reach the water supply system and that there are other safeguards in which the water would have been checked before being released.
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After making the correction, the worker notified a supervisor who disabled remote access to the system.
Police were notified of the incident late Friday afternoon, and the department’s digital forensics unit is working to determine the cause of the breach and identify the responsible individual or individuals. Gualtieri added that although the suspect remains unknown, the police have clues he is following.
Currently, it is not known why the Oldsmar system was targeted and whether the breach originated within the United States or outside the country. Gualtieri noted that the police “are not aware of any other systems accessed illegally”.
Oldsmar is about 24 kilometers northwest of Tampa. The incident occurred on the same weekend as the Super Bowl LV at Raymond Jay Stadium, where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9.
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In addition to disabling remote access, city manager Al Braithwaite said the treatment plant would make additional updates to the system to ensure that the incident does not happen again.
The police are asking all government entities in the Tampa Bay area to actively review their computer security protocols and make the necessary updates “consistent with the latest practices”.
“This type of activity and this type of hacking of critical infrastructure is not necessarily limited to water supply systems,” warned Gualtieri. “It can be anything, it can be sewage systems, it can be a variety of things. It can be really problematic and this is where we want to make sure that we are paying close attention to all of this.”
The incident is under criminal investigation by the Pinella County sheriff’s office, as well as by federal partners of the FBI and the United States Secret Service.
The Associated Press contributed to this report