Proposed Hack of UK Water Systems

Event Year: 2003 Reliability: Invalid
Country: United Kingdom
Industry Type: Water/Waste Water
Description:

Zipser’s talk on water management explained various remote telemetry and management systems and their interconnects. Packet radio and PSTN are the most common methods, since cabling is expensive but other methods are on their way. (#1)

None of the links perform encryption, making the only security that provided by obscurity of the (proprietary) protocols. (#1)

Detailed breakdown of RF systems that are used by water management authorities in the UK and how these systems can be acused, interfered with and generally messed up. (#2)

Live demo on how to monitor the un-encrypted water management systems and create a denial of service attack. Also showed that additional communication channels using dial up connections would kick in automatically in the event of such an attack. (#2)