“Hackers could mess with a city’s water supplies without attacking its critical infrastructure directly, but instead targeting its weakest link: internet-connected sprinklers, researchers warn in a new academic study. The researchers studied three different Internet of Things devices that help control irrigation and found flaws that would allow malicious hackers to turn them on remotely in an attempt to drain water. The attacks don’t rely on fancy hacking techniques or hard to find vulnerabilities, but to make a real, negative impact on a city’s water reserves, the hackers would need to take control of a lot of sprinklers. According to the researcher’s math, to empty an average water tower, hackers would need a botnet of 1,355 sprinklers; to empty a flood water reservoir, hackers would need a botnet of 23,866 sprinklers.”
Source: Hackers Could Cause Havoc By Pwning Internet-Connected Irrigation Systems – Motherboard
