Water pump sabotage blamed on Russian hackers, could it be a cyber false flag?
By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
A Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System, or SCADA (Photo credit: U.S. Navy/Joe Schmitt)
November 8th saw the first allegedly foreign-based cyber attack on American utility infrastructure, something which politicians and others have been warning about for some time now.
This was one of the main justifications behind the infamous “internet kill switch” and the new attack, which Reuters is now reporting originated in Russia, could give new impetus to a similar mechanism.
It is unclear at this point whether the water pump at the Springfield, Illinois water utility station on November 8th was an isolated incident.
The hackers used network credentials which had been hijacked from an industrial software developer, with which they remotely activated the pump and burnt it out.
Upon hearing the nature of the attack and how it operated it sounded to me much like the way Stuxnet was used to damage Iranian reactors last year, although the U.S. government has not made the connection as of yet.
My conclusion was supported by “online security specialists” according to Slashgear, who “are already drawing parallels between the Illinois attack and the Stuxnet virus.”
Slashgear adds, “Although never acknowledged by either government, many believe that particular viral strike – which sabotaged a centrifuge used in uranium enrichment – was controlled by the US and Israel.”
Indeed a leading expert in the field, Ralph Langner, proclaimed before a conference in California that the worm was created by Israel and the United States.
The case for Israeli origin was strengthened even more when it was revealed in January that Stuxnet was first tested in Dimona, Israel, which is what the New York Times called “the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program”.
Slashgear writes that this attack not only damaged the hardware but “confidence in critical systems” which I believe very well could be leveraged to push for another type of so-called internet kill switch or at least wider government control over so-called “critical infrastructure.”
The attack is being investigated by the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
Department of Homeland Security spokesman Peter Boogaard said, “there is no credible corroborated data that indicates a risk to critical infrastructure entities or a threat to public safety.”
However, a man named Joe Weiss who Reuters characterizes as “a prominent expert on protecting infrastructure from cyber attacks” who has read the one-page report from the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center claims otherwise.
Weiss said that based on the one-page report it was not yet clear if other networks had been breached, which directly conflicts with the claims made by Boogaard.
Weiss, who is a managing partner of Applied Control Solutions told Reuters over the phone that the report said, “An information technology services and computer repair company checked the computer logs of the system and determined the computer had been hacked into from a computer located in Russia.”
The fact that it allegedly originated in Russia is quite interesting, especially given the recent Russian movement of warships into Syrian territorial waters which is intended to stave off a possible foreign intervention.
Spoofing the origin of an attack is as easy as a few mouse clicks so the evidence claiming the attack came from Russia is likely thin, at best.
If it is based solely off of the IP address from which the attack originated the evidence would be far from adequate enough to claim that it was indeed a foreign attack.
The timing of the attack and the blame being placed squarely on Russia at this point is coincidental, to say the least, and we will have to see if this is used to pressure them in the coming days.
The Russian move to protect Syria from a foreign invasion is quite brazen and unlikely to be popular in Washington, so a false flag cyber attack is a very real possibility to justify some kind of diplomatic or even military pressure on Russia.
At this point it is pure speculation, although the claim that it indeed came from Russia is dubious at best, unless they have some kind of ironclad evidence which they refuse to share with the public.
Wired’s Threat Level cites only that the attack originated from Russian IPs which, like I previously said, is so easily spoofed that it is far from evidence that the attack actually came out of Russia.
It could just have easily come from the Pentagon, Israel, China or Timbuktu for that matter.
All we can do is wait and watch U.S.-Russian relations closely in the coming days and months, especially the language utilized by Western establishment media and politicians.
If you have any tips or information to pass my way please do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected] with articles, feedback or leads.
Madison Ruppert is a Los Angeles-based independent journalist and researcher as well as the founder, owner, administrator and editor of EndtheLie.com. He has no affiliations with any government agencies, political parties, non-governmental organizations, or economic schools. He is available for freelance writing assignments and appearances or interviews in any format. He can be reached by emailing
If it looks like stuxnet, smells like stuxnet, walks like stuxnet it’s probably stuxnet