Oldsmar (Florida, US), Feb 10: What happens to waste water? In most cities today, that water goes to a central waste-water treatment facility. At that place, the water is purified using chemicals. Many of these water treatment plants are now smart – meaning that computers are used to determine how much cleaning chemical should be used to purify the water.On February 5th ,an unidentified hacker was able to enter this system of Oldsmar city and change the value of the cleaning chemical.
Lye (sodium hydroxide) is the main cleaning chemical in water treatment plants. The hacker changed the value of the lye to be used from 100 parts per million (ppm) to 11,100 ppm. This would have led to poisoning of the water. The action took just 5 minutes. But, an alert operator observed that the mouse pointer was moving and someone was accessing the system remotely. Immediately, the operator changed the value back to safe levels and no harm was done.
