{"id":4645,"date":"2026-07-31T19:11:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T19:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4645"},"modified":"2026-07-31T19:11:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T19:11:34","slug":"iran-style-hackers-shut-down-a-minnesota-towns-water-plant-only-the-water-tower-saved-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4645","title":{"rendered":"Iran-style hackers shut down a Minnesota town\u2019s water plant. Only the water tower saved it"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Minnesota IT Services said state officials had yet to identify who was behind the attacks that took place Sunday and Monday. There were no reports that residents had been impacted by the attacks, though one city asked residents to conserve water for a couple hours while they tried to determine what was wrong.<\/p>\n

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The FBI, which is investigating, has not publicly identified a culprit and a spokesperson declined to say Thursday who the bureau thought might be responsible. The FBI, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other agencies warned in an advisory last week that Iranian hackers have been targeting water and wastewater systems and the operational controls other critical infrastructure sectors.<\/p>\n

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Digital warfare has\u00a0become ingrained in military conflict, and local\u00a0water plants\u00a0or\u00a0healthcare facilities\u00a0often lack the funds and know-how to install the latest software patches or take other security steps. That has made them a\u00a0favorite target, both because of the relative ease of penetrating them and because of the panic such disruptions can cause.<\/p>\n

Iran has the \u201cgeopolitical motivations\u201d and a recent history of targeting water systems, said Cynthia Kaiser, the former deputy assistant director of the FBI\u2019s cyber division who has been closely monitoring threats to critical infrastructure from hackers linked to the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think most credible researchers and responders would be right to treat it like it\u2019s Iran until proven otherwise,\u201d added Kaiser, who is now the senior vice president of Halcyon\u2019s Ransomware Research Center. \u201cWhen it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it\u2019s really important to call it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s interest in the operations of water systems inside the U.S. dates back years. In 2016, the Justice Department\u00a0charged a group of Iranian hackers\u00a0in connection with a cyberattack targeting a small dam near New York City.<\/p>\n

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Minnesota IT Services said that as of Thursday, there were no active requests from Minnesota communities for residents to modify usage of their drinking water. The state agency said most of the confirmed attacks involved technology that water systems use to remotely monitor and control equipment. It said that being impacted meant investigators confirmed there was malicious activity involving the system\u2019s technology and didn\u2019t mean every impacted community had their water service disrupted.<\/p>\n

The state agency said there are similarities among the incidents, including timing and the types of technology used, but investigators haven\u2019t determined if the same culprit was behind each one.<\/p>\n

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For a few hours on Monday, the city of Braham asked residents to minimize water use as they tried to determine why the water plant was offline. The city of about 1,700 people, located about 70 miles (113 kilometers) north of Minneapolis, said in a news release that the water plant outage was due to a cyberattack, but it didn\u2019t cause any issue with water quality.<\/p>\n

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The city said the attackers shut down the operating controls that shut down the well and water treatment plant. That left the city for a time only able to provide residents with the water held in the water tower.<\/p>\n

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In Plymouth, a city of about 80,000 located outside of Minneapolis, officials said on social media that their water infrastructure communications had been restored by Tuesday afternoon following a cyberattack. The city said crews were able to continue operating the system during the outage and it didn\u2019t have any impact on water levels or quality.<\/p>\n

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