Cyberattacks against water utilities across the country are becoming more frequent and more severe, the Environmental Protection Agency warned Monday as it issued an enforcement alert urging water systems to take immediate actions to protect the nation’s drinking water.
About 70% of utilities inspected by federal officials over the last year violated standards meant to prevent breaches or other intrusions, the agency said. Officials urged even small water systems to improve protections against hacks. Recent cyberattacks by groups affiliated with Russia and Iran have targeted smaller communities.
Some water systems are falling short in basic ways, the alert said, including failure to change default passwords or cut off system access to former employees. Because water utilities often rely on computer software to operate treatment plants and distribution systems, protecting information technology and process controls is crucial, the EPA said. Possible impacts of cyberattacks include interruptions to water treatment and storage; damage to pumps and valves; and alteration of chemical levels to hazardous amounts, the agency said.
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McCabe named China, Russia and Iran as the countries that are “actively seeking the capability to disable U.S. critical infrastructure, including water and wastewater.”
Why are any of them not air gapped?
I’ve worked on SCADA systems for water automation in a municipal water supply. The meters, valve positions, and sensors can have a tunnel back to the main office and generally aren’t accessible unless someone physically breaks into something. With a proper remote solution it’s pretty secure (as secure as anything, anyway) to access and manage things from anywhere cutting down water waste and time when problems occur.
The issue, as usual, is people. I can’t tell the story, but I can say that managers and higher ups at municipal water departments will override decisions to make things more accessible without proper protections because they refuse to understand the concept of even the most basic security. Not every water department, obviously, but I can absolutely point to several that will demand easy access with no VPN because they want to use their fucking home computer, and when you won’t provide it they’ll hire someone else who will.
I’ve worked on networks for water systems as well and you are right, the problem is people. Weak or default passwords, little to no physical security, it all comes down to the people in charge.
In this side of networking, typically accessibility is considered more important than security as they don’t want to be locked out of something in a pinch. With recent hacks, the opinion is changing, but slowly. The industrial world moves at snails pace compared to the enterprise side. They operate on a if it’s not broke don’t fix mentality.
So my “prepper” neighbor is on to something…
I can’t tell you what I do, but if you saw the stupid shit my firm sees, you’d be a prepper too.
This sounds like the sort of thing I’ve heard preppers tell me for the almost 50 years I’ve been around.
And I’ll repeat what I usually say: If society collapses to that point, I don’t want to survive the aftermath. I have no Mad Max fantasies.
No need for societal collapse. Most of my tech friends in Austin have rain collection tanks and emergency generators now after the grid collapse. Same goes with an uncle that moved to Puerto Rico.
It doesn’t take much (not much at all) to put you and your family in a position where you don’t have safe drinking water.
Having some sort of off-grid water storage or access method is not being a prepper.
If having off-grid water and power backup, along with some long term storage consumables (freeze dried and canned food) isn’t prepping, that what is your definition of prepping?
Hoarding guns and alienating your family.
That’s covers most of MAGA.
How long do you expect to be without water and power and have to eat your own food?
Because the people I’m talking about are suggesting indefinitely. No thank you.
What does your firm do and what do you see?
We specialize in data and system optimizations for enterprise critical applications.
ProTip: Contest your electric bills. Most states allow you to do so and the utility company will have to provide your meter reading data to back up the bill.
Is there any guarantee the utility company won’t just drop you like a rock when they’re fed up with contesting bills? (That is a serious question, most of us are locked in by utility monopolies so if that is a risk it would be borderline life ruining)
No. Large commercial customers contest their bills constantly.
I would guess that in many (or even most) areas that don’t have municipal utilities, the commercial utility is under no legal obligation to provide their service to you. Otherwise, they couldn’t shut off people’s electricity or water for non-payment.
Our water and electric data is collected from wireless readers. Are you saying they are not reporting accurately?
I’m skirting really close to my NDA here but think about this. Imagine a city has ~3,000,000 active meters. Each meter polls every five minutes or so (more often if it is a gas meter). Legal retention is about seven years. Usage reports are due to market daily. Given that this is exclusively a cost, executives aren’t keen on throwing buckets of money at it. So, in this “imaginary” scenario, what are the odds that things will go smoothly?
The EPA has faced setbacks. States periodically review the performance of water providers. In March 2023, the EPA instructed states to add cybersecurity evaluations to those reviews. If they found problems, the state was supposed to force improvements.
But Missouri, Arkansas and Iowa, joined by the American Water Works Association and another water industry group, challenged the instructions in court on the grounds that EPA didn’t have the authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act. After a court setback, the EPA withdrew its requirements but urged states to take voluntary actions anyway.
The Safe Drinking Water Act requires certain water providers to develop plans for some threats and certify they’ve done so. But its power is limited.
“I don’t need a safety on a gun! Safety is for sissies! …[incident]… Gah, I just blew my fucking foot off! Why didn’t anybody WARN me of the danger, this is all the goverment’s fault!”
