Author Archive

Peter Elkind

Peter Elkind is a senior reporter for ProPublica.

Cybersecurity

America’s drinking water is surprisingly easy to poison

Experts say the sorts of rudimentary vulnerabilities revealed in the cyberbreach at a water treatment plant in Florida -- including the lack of an internet firewall and the use of shared passwords and outdated software -- are common among America’s 151,000 public water systems.

By Jack Gillum and Peter Elkind
March 18, 2021

Cybersecurity

The U.S. spent $2.2 million on a cybersecurity system that wasn’t implemented — and might have stopped a major hack

A cybersecurity system called in-toto, which the government paid to develop but never required, might have protected against the SolarWinds hack.

By Jack Gillum and Peter Elkind
February 2, 2021

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