Water pump failure wasn’t cyber attack after all!
CHICAGO, Illinois (PNN) - November 26, 2011 - A water-pump failure in Illinois that was initially reported as the first foreign cyber attack on a public utility in the United States was in fact caused by a plant contractor traveling in Russia, according to a source familiar with a federal investigation of the incident.
Investigators analyzed log files and connections to foreign Internet protocol addresses within the utility’s computer system, said the source, who was not authorized to speak. “No indicators of malicious activity were found” in the computer system of the Curran-Gardner Townships Public Water District in Springfield, the source said.
The contractor, who had remote access to the computer system, was in Russia on personal business, the source added.
The suspicion of foreign hacking was raised in a preliminary report by the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center that was obtained by a control systems industry expert. The expert, Joe Weiss, alerted news media to the suspected intrusion.
But officials at the Department of Homeland Security division of the Amerikan Gestapo, which oversees industrial control system cyber security, cautioned from the outset that the report contained “no credible, corroborated data.”
The water pump in question had been experiencing problems, turning on and off and eventually failing, water district board members said. The pump has malfunctioned several times in recent years, a DHS official confirmed.
DHS was alerted to the Illinois report on Nov. 16 and at the water district’s request, on Sunday sent a team of industrial control system experts to the water plant to investigate, according to a DHS bulletin. FBI officials also took part in the inquiry, which included interviewing personnel and collecting logs for analysis. The agencies concluded that there was no malicious or unauthorized traffic from Russia, contrary to what was stated in the preliminary report.
Plant and federal officials are still investigating the cause of the pump’s failure.
