Engineer Sentenced to Prison for Hacking Utility, Disabling Water Meter-Readers

A federal court sentenced a Pennsylvania man to a year and a day in prison for hacking into his former employer's computer system and disabling the remote water meter readers that the company manufactured, according to the US Department of Justice.

Adam Flanagan, 42, plead guilty to two counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer and causing reckless damage. The radio frequency engineer hacked into his former employer's computer system after he was fired and disabled the water meter readers.

As a result, his former employer spent a large amount of time working with forensic examiners to determine what happened and how to resolve the problem. It also required local water district municipalities to dispatch employees out to read the meters, since the billing information was inaccurate after Flanagan disabled the remote meter readers.

A federal court judge opted to apply an enhanced sentencing guideline, which is allowed when a crime involves critical infrastructure, such as a city's water system.

Read more about the case here.