463
CISA Releases Guidance Urging Water Treatment Facilities to Disconnect Equipment From the Internet (www.privacyguides.org)
submitted 3 days ago by new_otters_raft@piefed.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world
68 comments fedilink hide all child comments

CISA released an urgent message warning water utilities to disconnect their logic controllers from the internet in the face of rising cyberattacks.

The hacks target internet-facing programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that control equipment and allow machinery to communicate. They monitor and control the water pressure, chemical dosing, and other factors to ensure the water is safe.

Many of the PLCs are apparently open to the internet and use default credentials, allowing a remote attacker to easily take them over.

I assume it is this CISA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_and_Infrastructure_Security_Agency

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago

Remote monitoring? Sure. Remote managing? Fuck that. These facilities shouldn't be unstaffed for days at a time.

[-] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

It's called paying people to watch the systems during off-hours. It's often way cheaper than setting up firewalls, setting up alerts, maintaining patches, paying a VPN company to manage connections, paying another company to handle authentication, and so on. Security constraints are getting so bad at my office I'm seriously thinking of how we can do more things with pen and paper.

[-] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

The things you mentioned probably aren't the problem. It's not hard or expensive to setup secure remote access for systems.

The real problem is that a lot of this very expensive and very specific infrastructure equipment is also very old, and frequently does not support newer and more secure protocols.

Source : I've been trying to get gas generators to fire off email alerts using modern authentication with conditional access for about a week now.

[-] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago

Changing tech is usually a lot harder than adoption. Better methods and protocols will keep emerging to fight new digital threats but with physical threats usually don't change. Only exception is social engineering (e.g. attacking a locked door by tricking someone into opening it). Even then a physical presence is required and someone can't enter a locked room from 2000 miles away.

[-] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

Security constraints are so bad at home I want to just buy paper books or go to library.

[-] Doomsider@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Oh for sure, air gapped sensors that relay information are going to be necessary. We should be building these systems with absolute security because they are critical to infrastructure.

[-] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Some people will say it's too hard to retrofit onto legacy equipment, but all it really means is adding a secondary system on top of the legacy system. Just a sensor array that has no interaction with existing systems.

[-] SanicHegehog@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yup. Fancy architecture diagram:

                  One Way Radio
                   Transmitter
[Nuclear Reactor] ------------> [Internet connected receiver] -> tHe ClOUd
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
463 points (99.6% liked)

Technology

86849 readers
3790 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws