US warns Siemens devices can be hacked amid fears Iran is breaching water plants

The U.S. government has issued a cybersecurity advisory warning that unidentified hackers are attempting to infiltrate devices manufactured by Siemens, which are employed to oversee and control critical infrastructure systems, including water facilities. This advisory, released on Wednesday by the National Security Agency, FBI, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, highlights an ongoing threat to Siemens S7 Series programmable logic controllers across various sectors, such as manufacturing, energy, water, and wastewater, chemical, food, and agriculture.

The advisory emphasizes that the compromise of these devices could result in disruptions to critical processes, safety incidents, downtime, equipment damage, compromise of sensitive data, and compliance violations, potentially causing cascading impacts across interconnected systems. Experts suspect that recent cyber attacks on local water systems in multiple states are linked to Iran.

The hackers are reportedly utilizing artificial intelligence to significantly reduce the technical expertise and time needed to develop exploits capable of successfully compromising the systems, according to the advisory. Siemens has yet to respond to a request for comment on the matter.