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Local and federal authorities are investigating after an attempt Friday to poison the city of Oldsmar’s water supply, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said.

Someone remotely accessed a computer for the city’s water treatment system and briefly increased the amount of sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, by a factor of more than 100, Gualtieri said at a news conference Monday. The chemical is used in small amounts to control the acidity of water but it’s also a corrosive compound commonly found in household cleaning supplies such as liquid drain cleaners.

The city’s water supply was not affected. A supervisor working remotely saw the concentration being changed on his computer screen and immediately reverted it, Gualtieri said. City officials on Monday emphasized that several other safeguards are in place to prevent contaminated water from entering the water supply and said they’ve disabled the remote-access system used in the attack.

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Originally posted by jodi:
Jesus.

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Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
Could be a foreign state actor, testing and practicing.

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What’s most interesting about the Florida water system hack? That we heard about it at all.

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An outdated version of Windows and a weak cybersecurity network allowed hackers to access a Florida wastewater treatment plant's computer system and momentarily tamper with the water supply, federal investigators revealed in a memo obtained by ABC News.

The FBI's Cyber Division on Tuesday notified law enforcement agencies and businesses to warn them about the computer vulnerabilities, which led to the Bruce T. Haddock Water Treatment Plant in Oldsmar being hacked on Feb. 5.

The plant's computer systems were using Windows 7, which hasn't received support or updates from Microsoft in over a year, according to the FBI.

"The cyber actors likely accessed the system by exploiting cybersecurity weaknesses, including poor password security and an outdated Windows 7 operating system to compromise software used to remotely manage water treatment," investigators wrote in the report. "The actor also likely used the desktop sharing software TeamViewer to gain unauthorized access to the system."