A massive surge in on Americans’ water supply in recent years has exposed a shift in hackers’ focus from financially motivated ransomeware to attacks designed to disrupt one of the most essential pieces of civilian infrastructure, senior Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials told Fox News Digital.
“Everyday life completely crumbles” when drinking water and wastewater systems are impacted, warned EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Jess Kramer.
“There is definitely been an increase, several fold on attacks recently,” Kramer added in an interview with Fox News Digital. “You’re seeing everything from failure to change password, leading to cyberattacks all the way to … system specifics being available online.”
Asked why the water sector has become such an attractive target, Kramer said the answer begins with how deeply embedded it is in Americans’ daily lives.
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“Our everyday life completely crumbles without access to drinking water and wastewater infrastructure,” she said. “Everything from hospitals to daycares, everything that we care about and need on an everyday basis can be impacted” if one of those cyberattacks succeeds.
EPA Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Jeff Hall said water utilities have also become appealing targets because many continue to operate aging infrastructure while lacking the resources to modernize their cybersecurity.
“We will see water systems left vulnerable to cyberattacks where there have not been significant amounts of investment in cybersecurity protocols,” Hall said, pointing to basic protections such as virtual private networks and firewalls that are still missing at some utilities.
Hall explained how hackers have “moved from ransomware attacks designed to extort payments from critical infrastructure generally to more specific attacks designed to disrupt critical infrastructure and particularly water and wastewater systems.”
Attackers, he said, are increasingly “manipulating the human-machine interface to change critical settings which disrupts the service and also puts people at risk.”
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The warning comes as cyber threats targeting U.S. water infrastructure have drawn heightened attention from federal and state officials.
In July, a coordinated cyberattack targeted more than 30 community water systems across Minnesota, disrupting technology used to remotely monitor and control equipment. More recently, Colorado officials disclosed that foreign actors breached two small water utilities and manipulated equipment used to control drinking water systems. Officials said drinking water remained safe in both cases, but the incidents highlighted growing concern over cyber threats to critical infrastructure that millions of Americans rely on every day.
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Unlike data breaches that primarily expose personal information or ransomware attacks intended to extract payment, successful cyber intrusions into water systems have the potential to interfere with services that underpin nearly every aspect of daily life â from
