Ill. pump failure wasn't cyberattack from Russia - Yahoo! News


Ill. pump failure wasn't cyberattack from Russia

By CARLA K. JOHNSON | AP – Thu, Dec 1, 2011



CHICAGO (AP) — Mystery solved. A reported cyberattack on a water district in central Illinois turned out to be a false alarm set off when an American contractor logged onto the system remotely while vacationing in Russia.

Jim Mimlitz of suburban St. Louis says he hopes he'll be able to laugh about it someday. For now, the contractor is puzzled. Why didn't terrorism investigators pick up the phone and call him? He says he could have straightened out the matter quickly.
Instead, investigators assumed someone had stolen Mimlitz' password and hacked into the system from Russia, causing a water pump to shut down five months later. A blogger spread word of the possible hack, touching off a minor panic.

The truth is, Mimlitz was on vacation with his family in Russia in June. Someone from the Curran Gardner Public Water District near Springfield called his cell phone and asked him to check data on the system. He did, but he didn't mention he was doing so from Russia.
Months later, after the water pump failed, a repairman examining the logs saw a Russian IP address linking to the system with Mimlitz' sign-on. The water district reported that to a state agency and the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center got involved.
The center released reports about a potential cyber compromise at the water district. The reports were meant to be initial raw reporting and not conclusive. A security consultant and blogger wrote about the reports and released the documents to reporters. The incident was reported as possibly the first successful cyberattack on the U.S. infrastructure.

"A quick and simple phone call to me right away would have defused the whole thing immediately," Mimlitz said. "All I did was I logged on. I tried to help. I looked at some data and gave them my advice."

The story of Mimlitz' vacation was first reported by Wired magazine's Threat Level blog. Mimlitz spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday.
There was no immediate response to requests for comment from the Illinois State Police, which took part in the investigation. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security referred to the department's previous statements saying there was "no evidence to support claims made" in the initial Illinois report "which was based on raw, unconfirmed data and subsequently leaked to the media ..."

Mimlitz has only kind words for the FBI and Department of Homeland Security investigators he met with last week for nearly four hours.
"I was as open as I could be," he said. "I wasn't trying to hide anything. I was just trying to help them find the problem. Even if the end result was not going to be good for me, that wasn't my concern. It was a very productive meeting and they were extremely sharp people."
Mimlitz's company — Navionics Research in Eureka, Mo. — helped set up the system that remotely manages computers controlling machinery in the water district. Security experts have pointed out such Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems are vulnerable to hacking.
"I think our system's very secure," Mimlitz said. "It doesn't mean we're not going to keep working on it."


Comments: Ill. pump failure wasn't cyberattack from Russia - Yahoo! News


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http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/01/m...restarts-cold/

Man on vacation confused for a Russian spy, almost restarts cold war

By James Trew posted Dec 1st 2011 2:35 PM



Threats of Russian espionage can come from the unlikeliest of sources, as Jim Mimlitz, owner of Navionics Research, a small integrator firm, knows only too well. Curran Gardner Public Water District, just outside of Springfield, Illinois, employed Mimlitz's firm to set up its Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system (SCADA), and the spy games began when Mimlitz went on vacation in Russia. While there, he logged into the SCADA system to check some data, then logged off and went back to enjoying Red Square and the finest vodka mother Russia has to offer.

However, five months later a Curran Gardner water pump fails, and an IT contractor eyeballing the logs spots the Russian-based IP address. Fearing stolen credentials, he passes the info up the chain of command to the Environmental Protection Agency (as it governs the water district) without bothering to contact Mimlitz, whose name was in the logs next to the IP address. The EPA then passed along the paranoia to a joint state and federal terrorism intelligence center, which issued a report stating that SCADA had been hacked. Oh boy. A media frenzy followed bringing all the brouhaha to Mimlitz's attention. After speaking with the FBI, the massive oversight was identified, papers were shuffled, and everyone went about their day. So, next time you delete all your company's e-mail, or restart the wrong server, remember: at least you didn't almost start World War III. Tap the source link for the full story.



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