Hackers manipulate drinking water during Teamviewer remote access

A mouse pointer suddenly moved at a waterworks in Florida as cybercriminals gained access to a water supply plant near Tampa. However, the manipulation of the water plant, which supplied about 15,000 people, fell flat, according to "Reuters" immediately caught the attention of an attentive employee.

The attackers could have increased the level of caustic sodium hydroxide in fresh water by a hundredfold. The lye is normally used in small quantities to regulate the acidity of the water. Fortunately, the process was reversed in time.

Teamviewer as a gateway

The manipulation makes it clear how easily and quickly hackers could gain access to such systems. In Florida's case, Teamviewer was the gateway because certain network devices may not have been clearly segmented and their data traffic not secured by firewalls. In any case, the damage would have been catastrophic and shows that operators of critical infrastructures such as a water supply need to invest in more processes, technologies or awareness training.

In a press release, Telsonic uses the incident as an opportunity to raise awareness about the use of IoT devices in the home office. For example, anyone who has connected their cameras via WLAN to monitor their home could also leave a security gap open to hackers. The authorities are also currently warning of the first attacks worldwide via privileged access to Microsoft 365 and Azure environments.

Source: Reuters/Telsonic