The Federal Bureau of Inquire announced today the arrest of William Cruikshank in connection with last month’s attack on the ChlorAlk plant in Le Sel, LA. That attack resulted in a chlorine release at the facility that injured twelve employees and caused overnight evacuation of the nearby Depatman Doubs Neighborhood. Cruikshank is being charged with twelve counts of attempted murder, unauthorized access to a sensitive computer system, and wiretapping.
Johnathan Quest, FBI spokesperson, confirmed that Cruikshank was arrested when he tried to recover a Bluetooth device that he had placed at the home of an unnamed control system engineer that worked at ChlorAlk. “We were keeping an eye on the device,” Quest said; “It was a specially modified cell phone, that Cruikshank had apparently used before, so we were pretty sure that he wanted it back.”
The Director of the National Critical Infrastructure Security Operations Center (CI-SOC), General Buck Turgidson, briefed reporters on the latest information about the ChlorAlk hack. “This was a sophisticated attack on the control systems at the facility,” Turgidson explained; “but there were no specific control system vulnerabilities exploited. We quickly determined that the attack was made via the engineering laptop used by one of the facility’s control system engineers.”
Special Agent R. (Ace) Bannon told reporters at the FBI press conference that the Bureau had initially looked at that engineer as a potential suspect, but quickly changed the focus of their investigation when Students for Immediate Neutralization of Chlorine Technology and Energy Reversion (SFINCTER) announced responsibility for the attack. “We have a lengthy ongoing investigation on this group, and a close examination of the laptop showed signs of it being hacked by Cruikshank,” Bannon explained.
A technician working at CI-SOC who was part of the investigation told me that it was surprising that Cruikshank was able to penetrate the well protected laptop. “Then we learned that the engineer was using the tools on the laptop to do some work at home on his smart refrigerator, she said; “That refrigerator had an old Bluetooth application that had a number of vulnerabilities that Cruikshank was able to exploit to get access to the laptop.”
Sueur Hargreaves-Bird, spokesperson for ChlorAlk that the engineer, only identified as ‘Chris’, had been hired after the hack of the facility’s chlorine sensors two years ago. “We specifically hired Chris because of his hacking background and put him to work looking for vulnerabilities in our systems,” Seuer said; “He has coordinated vulnerability disclosures with all of our vendors. Many were not happy with Chris’ efforts, but if they wanted to keep being suppliers for us and others in the industry, they knew that they had to fix the vulnerabilities that Chris found.”
Bannon confirmed that Cruikshank had targeted Chris. “Chris
had a very active blog where he discussed each of the vulnerabilities that he
had uncovered, and there were numerous hints that he worked in the chlor-alkali
industry. He was an obvious target for someone like Cruikshank.”
