February 2, 2024
Hackers in the Islamic Republic have chosen to attack the water supply system in the tiny town of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania.
The Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa said November 25 that one of its booster stations had been hacked by an Iranian-backed cyber group. It knew the hacker because the group posted its own name on the water authority’s equipment.
Aliquippa is a town with a population of 9,000 northwest of Pittsburgh.
Matthew Mottes, the chairman of the board of directors for the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa, confirmed to station KDKA-TV that the cyber group, known as Cyber Av3ngers, took control of one of the stations. An alarm went off as soon as the hack had occurred.
Mottes said the station, located on the outskirts of town, monitors and regulates pressure for Raccoon and Potter Townships and stressed that there was no known risk to the drinking water or water supply.
The machine that was hacked uses a system called Unitronics, which Mottes says is software or has components that are Israeli, which might have been the motivation for the attack.
The system has since been disabled. Members of the State Police were called to the booster station to begin a criminal investigation.
The federal government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) later said that “multiple” organizations in the United States have since been attacked by the group. Apparently, all of them were users of the Israeli Unitronics equipment. CyberAv3ngers have claimed responsibility for several attacks worldwide, including 10 water treatment stations in Israel as of October 30, 2023, according to their X page. They also took credit for disabling the website of Israel’s largest oil refinery in July. And they claimed in September to have targeted Israel’s railroad network, though the company denied that.
