Tucker Watts, Delano Chief of Police, announced today that
the Christmas day fire at the Delano Bakery and Sandwich Company store was the
result of a cybersecurity attack on the controls for the gas line leading to
the store. Hugh Holmes, the owner of the store has been arrested in connection
with the fire.
Watts announced that when the Delano Fire Department’s
investigation of the fire determined that the explosion and resulting fire was
due to a gas leak associated with the pressure relief device on the line
leading into the store, investigators started working with the Delano Gas Company
to determine the cause of the over pressurization of the line.
Investigators discovered a break in at a local gas-pumping
station and evidence of a cyber-intrusion via a USB port on one of the control
devices at the station. A local high-school student, whose name has not yet
been released, was identified by security videos as being in the pumping
station at the time of the intrusion. The student implicated Holmes as the one
who paid him to conduct the attack. Watts reported that Holmes was having
financial difficulties and apparently was looking for the insurance payout from
the incident to resolve those problems.
Delano Gas Company has reported that it is working with an
Atlanta, GA cybersecurity firm to identify the specific weaknesses that allowed
the successful cyber-intrusion. An individual with the company that was not
authorized to talk to the press noted that the company had tried to get
assistance from ECS-CERT to investigate the incident, but that assistance was
not available due to the current shutdown of portions of the Federal
Government. No ECS-CERT spokesman was available to comment on the claim.
Watts noted that the fire did not injure anyone and there
was only minor damage to nearby businesses due to the initial explosion. The incident
occurred on Christmas morning and there were very few people in the downtown
area at the time.
Cautionary Note: This is a future ICS news story.
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