Monday 11-21-11

Foreign hackers targeted U.S. water plant in apparent malicious cyber attack, expert says
By Ellen Nakashima

Foreign hackers caused a pump at an Illinois water plant to fail last week, according to a preliminary state report. Experts said the cyber-attack, if confirmed, would be the first known to have damaged one of the systems that supply Americans with water, electricity and other essentials of modern life.

Companies and government agencies that rely on the Internet have for years been routine targets of hackers, but most incidents have resulted from attempts to steal information or interrupt the functioning of Web sites. The incident in Springfield, Ill., would mark a departure because it apparently caused physical destruction.

Federal officials confirmed that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security were investigating damage to the water plant but cautioned against concluding that it was necessarily a cyber-attack before all the facts could be learned. “At this time there is no credible corroborated data that indicates a risk to critical infrastructure entities or a threat to public safety,” said DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard.

News of the incident became public after Joe Weiss, an industry security expert, obtained a report dated Nov. 10 and collected by an Illinois state intelligence center that monitors security threats. The original source of the information was unknown and impossible to immediately verify.

The report, which Weiss read to The Washington Post, describes how a series of minor glitches with a water pump gradually escalated to the point where the pump motor was being turned on and off frequently. It soon burned out, according to the report.

The report blamed the damage on the actions of somebody using a computer registered to an Internet address in Russia. “It is believed that hackers had acquired unauthorized access to the software company’s database” and used this information to penetrate the control system for the water pump.

Experts cautioned that it is difficult to trace the origin of a cyber-attack, and that false addresses often are used to confuse investigations. Yet they also agreed that the incident was a major new development in cyber-security.

“This is a big deal,” said Weiss. “It was tracked to Russia. It has been in the system for at least two to three months. It has caused damage. We don’t know how many other utilities are currently compromised.”

Dave Marcus, director of security research for McAfee Labs, said that the computers that control critical systems in the United States are vulnerable to attacks that come through the Internet, and few operators of these systems know how to detect or defeat these threats. “So many are ill-prepared for cyber-attacks,” Marcus said.

The Illinois report said that hackers broke into a software company’s database and retrieved user names and passwords of control systems that run water plant computer equipment. Using that data, they were able to hack into the plant in Illinois, Weiss said.

Senior U.S. officials have recently raised warnings about the risk of destructive cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure. One of the few documented cases of such an attack resulted from a virus, Stuxnet, that caused centrifuges in an Iranian uranium enrichment facility to spin out of control last year. Many computer security experts have speculated that Stuxnet was created by Israel — perhaps with U.S. help — as a way to check Iran’s nuclear program.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/checkpoint-washington/post/foreign-hackers-broke-into-illinois-water-plant-control-system-industry-expert-says/2011/11/18/gIQAgmTZYN_blog.html

Police: 2 Georgia Caregivers Waterboard 89-Year-Old Woman

JONESBORO, Ga. (CBS Atlanta) – Police charge two caregivers at a Jonesboro facility with waterboarding an 89-year-old woman.

Clayton County police said Jermeller Steed and Cicely Reed held down Anna Foley after an argument that started over ice cream.

They’re said to have allegedly held down Foley in a locked shower room, flooding her face with the hand-hold shower nozzle in 2008.

According to WGCL-TV, Foley was undergoing treatment at the facility for dementia. A co-worker witnessed the event and blew the whistle.

The technique slowly drowns subjects by blocking the air passages with flowing water while the subject is immobilized.

The Obama administration banned waterboarding suspected terrorists in January 2009, classifying it as torture.

Neither Steed nor Reed currently work at the elderly care facility.

http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2011/11/18/police-2-georgia-caregivers-waterboard-89-year-old-woman/

Police: Fake doc injected cement in woman's rear

MIAMI (AP) - A woman who wanted to work at a nightclub started searching for someone who could perform plastic surgery at a cheap price to give her a curvier body. Police say what she found was a woman posing as a doctor who filled her buttocks with cement, mineral oil and flat-tire sealant.

The suspect _ who police say was born a man and identifies as a woman _ apparently performed the surgery on herself, and investigators say she may have victimized others. Oneal Ron Morris, 30, was arrested Friday after a year on the lam and has been charged with practicing medicine without a license with serious bodily injury.

Police photos show Morris as a small-framed woman with bee-stung pouty lips, arched eyebrows, oversized hoop earrings _ and a large backside. She was released from jail on bond. A phone listing for Morris could not be found, and it's unclear if she has an attorney.

Miami Gardens Police Sgt. Bill Bamford said Sunday that Morris bounced from house to house for a year, driving a black Mercedes and staying out of investigators' sight "like a ghost." An officer drove by one of those possible houses nearly every day on his way to work and saw the car outside on Friday, and he arrested Morris soon after.

The victim, who is not being named due to medical privacy laws, paid $700 for a series of injections in May 2010. She was referred to Morris by a friend.

Morris injected some type of tube in several sites around her bottom, pumping it full of a toxic concoction. Morris reassured the woman when the pain became too intense, police said.

Bamford said Morris told the woman, "`Oh don't worry, you'll be fine. We just keep injecting you with the stuff and it all works itself out.'"

Bamford said the victim was reluctant to come forward. She quickly went to two South Florida hospitals due to severe abdominal pain and infected sores on her buttocks accompanied by flu-like symptoms. But she left each time, too embarrassed to tell doctors what she'd done.

Her mother eventually took her to a hospital on Florida's west coast, where alarmed doctors pressed her for information. They alerted the Department of Health.

"The doctors knew no licensed physician in his right mind would ever do this," Bamford said.

The victim is still recovering from the surgery and says it's too painful to work. She also has racked up numerous medical bills.

Authorities believe there are other victims who may be too embarrassed to come forward.

"(Morris) was readily introduced to our victim as someone who could help improve her shape, so we believe (she's) done this to other people," Bamford said.

http://wtop.com/?nid=209&sid=2640560