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Someone broke into the computer system of a water treatment plant in Florida and tried to poison drinking water for a municipality’s more than 13,000 residents, officials said on Monday.
The intrusion occurred on Friday evening, when an unknown person remotely accessed the computer interface used to adjust the chemicals that treat drinking water for Oldsmar, a small city that’s about 16 miles northwest of Tampa. The intruder changed the level of sodium hydroxide to 1,100 parts per million, a significant increase from the normal amount of 100 ppm, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said in a Monday morning press conference. Had the change not been reversed almost immediately, it would have raised the amount of chemical to toxic levels.
“This is obviously a significant and potentially dangerous increase,” Gualtieri told reporters.
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