South Staffordshire Water

History

2022: Water Supply IT Shutdown and Shutdown

The British company South Staffordshire Water, which supplies 330 million liters of drinkable water to 1.6 million customers per day, issued a message on August 16, 2022, in which it confirmed a violation of IT systems due to a cyber attack.

According to the report, water supply and distribution systems continue to function, which indicates that the failure of IT systems will not affect the supply of clean water to consumers of the company or its divisions, Cambridge Water and South Staffs Water.

Hackers shut down IT water systems

This was made possible by the reliable systems and controls for the supply and quality of water that we constantly use, as well as by the operational work of our specialists in responding to this incident and the implementation of additional measures that we have put in place for precautionary purposes, - said in a statement published on the company's website.

In addition, South Staffordshire Water assures its customers that all service services are operating as normal, so there is no risk of prolonged outages due to a cyber attack.

Meanwhile, the Clop ransomware group declared Thames Water its victim, posting an ad on its onion website, claiming that they had gained access to SCADA systems that they could manipulate to harm 15 million customers - they were left without water.

The hackers claim to have informed Thames Water about the shortcomings of its network security, and say they acted responsibly by not encrypting data and removing only 5 TB from hacked systems.

However, after the alleged breakdown of negotiations on the payment of the ransom, the attackers published the first sample of stolen data, including passports, screenshots from SCADA water treatment systems, driver's licenses and much more.

Thames Water formally disputed the claims, saying reports that Clop had been hacked into its network were a "cyber hoax" and that its operations were being carried out in full.

One of the key details of this case is that, among the evidence published, Clop presents a user name and password spreadsheet that lists the email addresses of South Staff Water and South Staffordshire. In addition, as BleepingComputer notes, one of the leak documents sent to the target firm is clearly addressed to South Staffordshire.

After a while, Clop fixed its mistake and now South Staffordshire Water is listed as the victim on the ransomware website.^[1]

Notes

Шаблон:Remarks