A coordinated cyberattack that targeted more than 30 Minnesota community water systems has alarmed industrial cybersecurity experts, not because it caused widespread disruption, but because it appears to represent the first distributed campaign against dozens of small utilities linked by a common operational technology weakness.
While the affected communities reported that drinking water remained safe and disruptions were limited, security researchers say the incident marks another escalation in a months-long campaign targeting US water infrastructure amid heightened geopolitical tensions with Iran.
“This is a first-of-its-kind distributed attack on water utilities,” Markus Mueller, field CI...