Iranians Hacked US Dam

Iranians Hacked US Dam

According to the reports, two years ago the Iranian hackers have breached the control system of a dam not far from New York City, raising concerns about the security of the US infrastructure as a whole. This reportedly occurred at the Bowman Avenue dam in Rye, New York – a small structure used for flood control.

It turned out that the hackers gained access to the dam 20 miles away from New York City via a cellular modem, according to an unclassified DHS summary of the incident that didn’t mention the type of infrastructure. Actually, the dam is really very small – it is a 20-foot-tall concrete slab across Blind Brook, about 5 miles from Long Island Sound. The FBI agents visited the dam two years ago to question the city’s information-technology manager about a hacking incident. Perhaps, such attention was due to the fact that the dam breach was difficult to pin down, and federal investigators might have thought the hackers originally targeted a much larger dam in Oregon.

The incident took place when hackers linked to the Iranian government were attacking American bank websites in retaliation to the US spies damaging an Iranian nuclear facility with the Stuxnet worm. Overall, the security breach fuelled concerns about many of the old computers controlling infrastructure, and the US government was notified of the infiltration. According to the reports, there are more than 57,000 industrial control systems connected to the Internet in the US, so such concerns are not without a reason.

In the meantime, Homeland Security representative would not confirm the hack, only saying that the department’s 24-hour cybersecurity information-sharing hub and an emergency response team cover the threats and vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure.

Source : ET