Security News > 2024 > May > US govt warns of pro-Russian hacktivists targeting water facilities
The US government is warning that pro-Russian hacktivists are seeking out and hacking into unsecured operational technology systems used to disrupt critical infrastructure operations.
Water plants use OT devices to manage water treatment, distribution, and pressure to provide a continuous and safe water supply.
In an advisory released today, the US government warns that pro-Russian hacktivists have been targeting insecure and misconfigured OT devices since 2022 to disrupt operations or create "Nuisance effects."
A pro-Russian hacktivist group known as the Cyber Army of Russia has claimed to be behind attacks on Texas and Indiana water treatment and processing plants, as well as water infrastructure in Poland and France.
The advisory warns that government agencies have seen these hacktivists targeting OT devices through different techniques, mainly utilizing VNC:. To protect against these attacks, the advisory offers a wide range of steps, including putting HMIs behind firewalls, hardening VNC installs, enabling multifactor authentication, applying the latest security updates, and changing default passwords, and increasing the overall security posture of IT environments.
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