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In this RedState article, Ben Smith warns that America’s water infrastructure remains dangerously vulnerable as Iran-linked hackers and ransomware actors continue targeting poorly secured local systems.
- A March 14 ransomware attack knocked out the water treatment plant serving Minot, North Dakota, forcing staff to operate manually for 16 hours while the city spent more than two weeks rebuilding its SCADA system.
- The article says water quality in Minot was not affected, but the attack exposed the fragility of the digital control systems many communities rely on.
- EPA inspections that began in 2023 reportedly found that more than 70 percent of inspected drinking water systems were violating federal requirements tied to basic security practices.
- Smith highlights examples such as unchanged factory-default passwords, shared employee credentials, and former workers retaining access to critical infrastructure systems.
- An April 7 advisory from the EPA, FBI, CISA, and NSA warned that Iranian-affiliated actors were actively targeting drinking water and wastewater systems, not merely posing a hypothetical threat.
- Reported consequences of these intrusions have included wiped configurations, tampered mechanical sensors, disabled control interfaces, and financial losses.
- The article points to a November 2023 breach of a Pennsylvania water system by an Iran-affiliated group that forced workers to manually shut down a pumping station.
- Smith argues the problem is structural: the United States has more than 153,000 drinking water systems and 16,500 wastewater systems, many of them running old equipment on limited budgets.
- The article notes that there is currently no mandatory federal cybersecurity standard for water systems, and that EPA efforts to expand oversight through state sanitary surveys were blocked after a lawsuit by state attorneys general.
- Smith concludes that Congress has failed to create a serious cybersecurity floor for critical water infrastructure despite years of warnings from GAO and federal agencies.
Read the full story: https://redstate.com/ben-smith/2026/06/03/iran-linked-hackers-are-targeting-americas-water-systems-most-still-lack-basic-security-n2202984
