Feds Charge Iranian Hacker in Infiltration of N.Y. Dam’s IT Systems
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, accompanied U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of the Southern District of New York, right, and FBI Director James Comey, arrives to a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, Thursday, March 24, 2016. Jacquelyn Martin / AP Photo
The attack on the Bowman Avenue Dam “represents a frightening new frontier in cybercrime,” according to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
Here’s an important reminder about the cybersecurity threats our digital infrastructure faces: U.S. officials have formally charged seven hackers working on behalf of the government of Iran of targeting the U.S. financial sector in a series of attacks starting in 2011. For state and local agencies, there’s some more distressing news that comes with the bigger headline involving the Wall Street targets.
According to an indictment, unsealed on Thursday in a Manhattan federal court, one of the seven suspected hackers also gained access to Supervisory Control and Data Acquisitions system at a small dam in Westchester County, New York, in August and September of 2013.
The Bowman Avenue Dam, built in 1940 and located in the village of Rye Brook, is not a large structure, but its sluice gates help regulate Blind Brook’s water flow and it’s part of local flood control infrastructure. The sluice gates are owned and operated by the neighboring city of Rye, which had been notified by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security soon after the hack about the unauthorized access to the dam’s IT systems.
Hamid Faroozi, the Iranian man federal officials charged in the hacking of the dam’s IT systems, is accused of accessing information on the dam’s operations and water flow rates plus systems that can operate the sluice gates remotely.
But, as The Journal News reports, ”unbeknownst to Firoozi, the sluice gate had been manually disconnected for maintenance, preventing him from controlling the dam.”
Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in the Justice Department’s announcement:
The infiltration of the Bowman Avenue Dam represents a frightening new frontier in cybercrime. These were no ordinary crimes, but calculated attacks by groups with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard and designed specifically to harm America and its people. We now live in a world where devastating attacks on our financial system, our infrastructure, and our way of life can be launched from anywhere in the world, with a click of a mouse.
So, here are some friendly reminders to state and local officials about cybersecurity …
From a Route Fifty guest article by Bret Brasso, the vice president for state, local and education at cybersecurity firm FireEye:
Currently, almost 90 percent of state officials are confident that they're protected against cyber threats. That confidence is no guarantee that their systems are actually secure—or even that they're not already breached. In 2014, it took an average of 205 days for organizations to discover they were breached. And of those organizations breached, nearly 70 percent learned of the attack from a third-party source, such as the FBI.
Shifting to a mindset that’s geared for proper cybersecurity response and readiness is critically important, Brasso continues:
That starts with assuming that they've already been hacked. This mindset forces decision makers to identify their worst-case scenario—whether that's a data breach involving the theft of millions of medical records or a control system breach that leads to the loss of transportation, energy or other critical public infrastructure services.
Fortunately, the Bowman Dam attack didn’t result in any serious impacts on public safety, but it shows just how vulnerable digital infrastructure that controls physical infrastructure can be.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said in a statement: “As the Iranian attack on the Westchester dam shows, a particularly neglected area is critical infrastructure—dams and power grids—and we must increase our focus on protecting them.”
Michael Grass is Executive Editor of Government Executive’s Route Fifty.
NEXT STORY: Google Fiber’s Advice for Cities Looking to Work With High-Speed Internet Providers