Engineer Sentenced to Prison for Hacking Utility, Disabling Water Meter-Readers
A Pennsylvania man is sentenced to more than a year in prison after hacking into a remote water meter reading system run by his former employer.
A federal court sentenced a Pennsylvania man to a year and a day in prison for hacking into his former employer's computer system and disabling the remote water meter readers that the company manufactured, according to the US Department of Justice.
Adam Flanagan, 42, plead guilty to two counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer and causing reckless damage. The radio frequency engineer hacked into his former employer's computer system after he was fired and disabled the water meter readers.
As a result, his former employer spent a large amount of time working with forensic examiners to determine what happened and how to resolve the problem. It also required local water district municipalities to dispatch employees out to read the meters, since the billing information was inaccurate after Flanagan disabled the remote meter readers.
A federal court judge opted to apply an enhanced sentencing guideline, which is allowed when a crime involves critical infrastructure, such as a city's water system.
Read more about the case here.
About the Author
You May Also Like
Transform Your Security Operations And Move Beyond Legacy SIEM
Nov 6, 2024Unleashing AI to Assess Cyber Security Risk
Nov 12, 2024Securing Tomorrow, Today: How to Navigate Zero Trust
Nov 13, 2024The State of Attack Surface Management (ASM), Featuring Forrester
Nov 15, 2024Applying the Principle of Least Privilege to the Cloud
Nov 18, 2024