Earlier this month, a pump failure at an Illinois water plant was blamed on Russian hackers, but the FBI and DHS found no evidence to support a security breach. Now Wired has dug into the case and found the whole hacking scare was much ado about nothing.

The story starts with Jim Mimlitz, who helped set up the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems at the Illinois facility and occasionally provided technical support. While on vacation in Russia, he received a call on his cellphone seeking advice and logged in to examine some data records; he didn't tell the caller where he was.

Five months later, a failed pump prompted an …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Following a report last week that an Illinois water plant was hacked, both the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have issued a statement saying that the report was false. The report came from security expert Joe Weiss, who contended that the control system for the plant was compromised, equipment was damaged, and that the hack originated in Russia. At the time, the DHS and FBI confirmed that equipment was damaged, but would not confirm that it was a result of a hack. Today, they are denying it, according to a statement received by Jeffrey Carr:

After detailed analysis, DHS and the FBI have found no evidence of a cyber intrusion in …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The control system at a Springfield, IL water system was hacked last week, according to a report from security expert Joe Weiss. Privy to a report concerning the attack, Weiss wrote in a blog post that the malicious code had been in the computer systems that control the water plant for at least two or three months. Plant workers noticed the equipment was acting up, and that it has recently been abnormally cycling on and off - causing a water pump to burn out. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed damage at the facility, but the DHS and FBI say that they haven't yet confirmed a hack was the source of the failure - addi …

Read the full story at The Verge.