DEF CON hackers plug security holes in US water systems amid tsunami of
threats
www.theregister.com/2025/08/1…
A DEF CON hacker walks into a small-town water facility…no, this is not the
setup for a joke or a (super-geeky) odd-couple rom-com. It’s a true story that
happened at five utilities across four states.
And now, nine months into providing free cybersecurity services to a handful
of American critical infrastructure systems, the project’s organizers plan to
grow the initiative massively before the end of the year to protect thousands
of water systems across the country.
The Franklin project, named for Benjamin Franklin, who founded America’s first
volunteer fire department, launched at last year’s DEF CON with 350 people
signing up to give their time and talent to water facilities at no charge.
The volunteers were deployed across five water systems in four states —
Indiana, Oregon, Utah, and Vermont — and provided no-cost assistance with
cybersecurity basics, such as making sure the utilities had changed default
passwords and turned on multi-factor authentication. They also assisted with
asset inventories, operational technology (OT) assessments, and network
mapping and scanning.