Chinese break into US dam database

Chinese hackers have cracked a US Army database that contains information about the vulnerabilities of thousands of US dams. The hacking of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' National Inventory of Dams (NID) has raised concerns that information gathered in the attack could help China carry out a cyberattack on the national electrical power grid.

Pete Pierce, a Corps of Engineers spokesman, confirmed the cyber incident but declined to provide details.

"The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is aware that access to the National Inventory of Dams (NID), to include sensitive fields of information not generally available to the public, was given to an unauthorized individual in January 2013 who was subsequently determined to not to have proper level of access for the information," Pierce said in a statement.

"[U.S. Army Corps of Engineers] immediately revoked this user's access to the database upon learning that the individual was not, in fact, authorized full access to the NID," he said.

Having such an important information, hackers could also access the systems that control a dam's turbine generators. A computer mistakenly started one in a Russian damn in 2009, killing 75 people and destroying eight of the nine other turbines in the dam.

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