Accidental Remote Uploading of PLC Program
| Event Year: | 2000 | Reliability: | Confirmed |
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| Country: | Canada | ||
| Industry Type: | Petroleum | ||
| Description: | A testing and programming facility for the petroleum company’s PLCs was setup by an engineering consultant in a remote city. An engineer who had just returned from the plant site used his laptop to connect to a PLC he believed was in his office. Instead the programming software connected to the last connected PLC, which was a live PLC at the plant site. Not realizing this, the engineer uploaded some trial software to the live PLC causing shutdown of a critical pipeline. |
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| Impact: | The petroleum company lost approximately 1/2 day of operations and about 10,000 barrels of production. |
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| Action Description: | The oil company changed management procedures so that the controls group responsible for operations had knowledge and responsibility for all remote testing and engineering of PLC systems. | ||