http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/water-pump-hack-mystery-solved/ By Kim Zetter Threat Level Wired.com November 30, 2011 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. Now, in an exclusive interview with Threat Level, the contractor behind that Russian IP address says a single phone call could have prevented the string of errors that led to the dramatic false alarm. “I could have straightened it up with just one phone call, and this would all have been defused,” said Jim Mimlitz, founder and owner of Navionics Research, who helped set up the utility’s control system. ”They assumed Mimlitz would never ever have been in Russia. They shouldn’t have assumed that.” [...] _____________________________________________________ Subscribe to InfoSec News - www.infosecnews.org http://www.infosecnews.org/mailman/listinfo/isnReceived on Thu Dec 01 2011 - 00:43:49 PST
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