Here are a couple of items from this week’s latest Sans News bites from blog The Technology blog and podcast

Here are a couple of items from this week’s latest Sans News bites

As part of this week’s Sans News Bites, I’ve read two of the recent articles that caught my attention both from Cyberscoop.

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The first article that caught my attention was the Florida case with the treatment of their water. The good news is that the potential hack did not cause much damage as it was reversed quickly, yet, the hack was through an application used to monitor things

An unidentified hacker on Feb. 5 broke into the computer system of a water treatment plant for a town outside of Tampa, Florida, and temporarily changed
the plant’s sodium hydroxide setting to a potentially dangerous level, local authorities said Monday.

The attacker changed the level of sodium hydroxide in the water treatment plant in the town of Oldsmar from about 100 parts per million to 11,100 parts
per million, said Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff of Pinellas County, Florida. Treatment plants use sodium hydroxide to make it drinkable, but it can be unsafe
for people in large quantities.

The breach did not cause any harm to public health, but it is a stark reminder of the risks that come with increasingly digitized critical infrastructure.

According to the article, the FBI and the Secret Service are involved in the investigation, which makes this quite interesting.

The article continues:

The attacker broke into the Oldsmar Water Treatment Facility’s computer system twice on Feb. 5, according to Gualtieri, taking advantage of remote access
software that operators use for maintenance. Not long after the intruder changed the sodium hydroxide level, a plant operator noticed and reversed the
change, according to authorities.

This is the best news out of it, someone noticing and fixing the problem and tht’s what you want.

It would have taken 24 to 36 hours before the altered water solution entered the water supply and there were redundancies in place to prevent that, according
to Gualtieri and Oldsmar Mayor Eric Seidel.

I wonder what those procedures were?

The chilling news:

Engineers at industrial plants often used remote software to monitor plant performance, a practice that has long opened up potential avenues for hackers.
The incident at Oldsmar, a town of some 15,000 people, is bound to bring such security arrangements under fresh scrutiny.

The good news is that this was contained quickly but what will happen next?

According to the article, Hackers breached a facility in Israel last year, and its linked in Cyberscoop’s article. Its not normal, but I wonder if it will become the new normal for hackers once they learn about this?

• Hacker breached Florida water facility to alter sodium hydroxide level, police say

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The next article may be of interest if you use a bard code scanner. According to the article that was mentioned as part of Sans News Bites this bar code scanner was very well liked until it was hit with code that did unwanting things to the device.

According to the first paragraph of the article, it says:

An app with more than 10 million downloads from the Google Play Store recently took a hard turn to the dark side, according to antivirus company Malwarebytes.

Google removed the application in December after it was apparently opening the browser to serve up advertisments. When Google removes it from the play store like this, the article indicates that the application is still on your phone. It may be time for this application to be removed from your phone. Since I’m not an Android user, I am unable to help you further. Check with someone who may know more and let’s learn together.

“It is frightening that with one update an app can turn malicious while going under the radar of Google Play Protect,” Collier writes.

Approximately 10 million users are effected, so get help if you can.

• Barcode scanner in Google Play Store became malware after years of popularity, researchers say

Thanks for reading, and make it a great day!

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Informazioni sull'articolo

Here are a couple of items from this week’s latest Sans News bites was released on February 9, 2021 at 6:00 pm by tech in article commentary.
Last modified: February 9, 2021.

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