Hacker Tries To Poison Florida Town’s Water Supply

HACKER Tries To Poison Florida Town’s Water Supply By Altering The Chemical Levels at the Treatment Plant

A hacker targeted a water treatment plant in Oldsmar, Florida, on Friday, February 5, a town with 15,000 inhabitants, but luckily, the plot was discovered by a supervisor at the plant who then managed to reverse the attempted threat before any damage was caused, it has been reported by Sky News.

The water treatment plant uses the chemical sodium hydroxide to control the levels of acid in the water, with the amount normally added being 100 parts per million, but, an as-yet-unknown hacker somehow got into the computer system and managed to increase the amount of sodium hydroxide up to 11,100 parts per million!

Sodium hydroxide is used in things like drain cleaners, and soaps, and in high concentrations it can cause burns, irritation, and other complications.

Bob Gualtieri, the Pinellas County Sheriff said in his news conference on Monday 8, “At no time was there a significant adverse effect on the water being treated. Importantly, the public was never in danger”.

A worker at the plant told The Tampa Bay Times that he first reported something suspicious at around 8am on the Friday morning, when he noticed the computer system had somehow been accessed, and by 1.30pm the intruder had taken control of the system and started to increase the sodium hydroxide levels, but they managed to over-ride it and reverse the changes.

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