Suspected Iran Cyberattacks on U.S. Water Supply Follow Years of Warnings and Neglect
New York Times · LC · trust 63/100
Federal and state officials are racing to address an assault on the nation’s water supply that they believe is the work of Iranian hackers.
Listen · 9:42 min Share full article A water treatment plant in Georgia earlier this year. Officials have long warned that the nation’s roughly 150,000 water treatment systems are relatively easy targets for hackers. Credit... Nicole Craine for The New York Times By Dustin Volz
Dustin Volz has reported extensively on cybersecurity weaknesses in U.S. critical infrastructure, including municipal water systems. He spoke to federal and state officials and security experts for this story.
The steps were modest, but necessary, officials said at the time: Many municipalities lacked even basic protections, and the computers that monitor and adjust water quality, including chemical-treatment levels, were easy-to-find targets for a would-be intruder.
The E.P.A. rescinded the order, however, after Republican-led states and industry groups sued to block its enforcement. They argued that the E.P.A. lacked authority for the move and that smaller, underfunded utilities would struggle to adopt the new standards.
The episode is just one of several in recent years in which efforts to bolster the cyberdefenses of America’s water systems were blocked despite repeated attacks that highlighted vulnerabilities. Just a little more than a month after the E.P.A. proposal was killed, a small town in western Pennsylvania disclosed that a hacking group tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps briefly took control of equipment used to adjust water pressure.
Now federal and state officials are racing to address an alarming, widespread assault on the nation’s water supply that they believe is also probably the work of Iranian hackers.
Last week, at least seven states , including Minnesota and Michigan, reported incidents to the F.B.I., and in some cases the hacks — or the response to them — degraded water operations . The tally of states reporting possible attacks to the F.B.I. is now at least a dozen, according to people familiar with the investigation. The F.B.I. has not disclosed the states publicly, but some have come forward to confirm activity.
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