U.S. government deny reports of water utility cyber attack

The U.S government (FBI and DHS) claim that no cyber attack whether from the US mainland or overseas actually happened as repored in the media last week. The media say that 'attackers' were able to burn out the pump after accessing its industrial control system (SCADA). The hack was released by Applied Control Systems who reported and published the details of the hack, but the URL where the hack was posted has since been removed. In the meantime, the DHS is investigating a claim by a hacker who goes by "pr0f" who claimed to have compromised the Curran-Gardner Public Water District in Springfield, Illinoislast week. " "pr0f"  claimed in an email to ThreatPost (Kaspersky), the Texan water company used a three character password to secure the Internet-enabled SCADA system. The big question right now is, why are SCADA systems connected directly to  the Internet?