New Orleans, LA
Today Isaac B (IB) Kaghun announced that the bankruptcy
proceedings completed today meant that the Blew Bayou Chemical Company was not
going to re-open its doors. IB reported that Chinese hackers were responsible
for the high-rework rate over the last six months that destroyed the
profitability of the company. He claimed that hackers supporting Tianjin
Chemical, his only competitor in the production of Tetramethyldeath (TMD), the
revolutionary plasticizer being used as a replacement for BPA.
IB Kaghun, the son of Russian emigres, developed TMD during
his graduate studies at LSU. TMD is a monomer that can be added to the
polymerization of PVC and other plastics to provide both increased flexibility
and strength to those plastics. Tianjin Chemical started production of the
chemical after a well-publicized hack of Blew Bayou Chemical computers stole
proprietary information about the production of the material. The FBI was never
able to find prove that Tianjin Chemical had anything to do with the data
theft.
Blew Bayou had been successfully manufacturing TMD for about
ten years with multiple expansions of their facility east of New Orleans. Last
spring the company started to experience manufacturing problems that resulted
in high contamination rates in their product that made the TMD unusable. The
costs associated with the lost production and disposal of the flammable
chemical quickly ate into the bottom line of Blew Bayou Chemical.
Recent disclosures about vulnerabilities in the Robotron
programmable logic controllers (PLC) raised the possibility that a hack of
those devices being used in the Blew Bayou manufacturing facility raised the possibility
of that being the cause of the manufacturing problems at the plant. IB
contacted the Electronic Control System CERT for assistance to determine if a
cyber attack had taken place.
Immanuel C. Securitage, a spokesman for ECS-CERT, confirmed
that the agency had completed an on-site investigation and did find
unauthorized modifications to the programming of some of the PLCs used in the
manufacturing process.
“This was a very sophisticated attack,” Securitage said. “There
is a critical temperature that must be maintained in the manufacturing process.
Any temperature above that critical point causes an increase in the production
of undesirable byproducts. The programing of the PLC was modified to change the
temperature being reported by two separate temperature probes so that they
reported lower temperatures than was actually being experienced in the reaction
vessel.”
Kaghun added that whoever was responsible for the hack had
very detailed knowledge of the manufacturing process. The revised PLC
programming used a complex algorithm so that the rate of change of the reported
temperature increased as the temperature approached the critical point. The
reported temperature changes then slowly decreased back to actual temperatures
above the critical temperature. This was important because at about 15 degrees
above the critical point the pressure would have started to rise in the vessel,
alerting operators to problems with the reaction.
UPDATE
Houston, TX
Rumors have been confirmed that as part of the bankruptcy
settlement, IB Kaghun is providing the details about the manufacturing process
for TMD to one of his suppliers, a major chemical company outside of Houston.
This is being used in lieu of cash payment for the debts to that company. There
are no plans to re-open the facility in Louisiana, according to industry
sources.
There are also rumors that the Federal government is
considering sanctions against Tianjin Chemical for their alleged part in the
hacking of Blew Bayou Chemical.
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