Iranian hackers infiltrated computers of small dam in NY

Iranian hackers breached the control system of a dam near New York City in 2013, an infiltration that raised concerns about the security of the country’s infrastructure, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing former and current US officials.

The computer systems controlling the Bowman Avenue Dam in Rye, around 20 miles from New York City, were hacked from the Middle East in 2013 and could have caused surrounding areas to flood.

Two people familiar with the breach told the newspaper it occurred at the Bowman Avenue Dam in Rye, New York.

According to researchers at Shodan, a search engine that catalogs each machine online, the systems range from office air-conditioning units to major pipelines and electrical-control systems.

The breach of the flood-control dam, which is only about 6m tall, was very hard to track down, the sources said, and investigators originally thought the hackers were aiming at a much larger dam in Oregon.

Homeland Security spokesman S.Y. Lee would not confirm the breach to Reuters.

According to him, the agency “continues to coordinate efforts to strengthen the security and resilience of critical infrastructure, working with our federal and industry partners across the country to raise awareness about evolving threats and promote measures to reduce risks to systems we all rely on”.

According to the Journal, the Department of Homeland Security, for the 12 months ending September 30, had received and responded to reports of 295 industrial-system hacking incidents.

Previous year a steel plant in Germany was compromised by hackers, causing “massive” damage to a blast furnace.

But Iran’s cyberwarfare capabilities have been building in recent years; this year, Iranian hackers also accessed the personal emails and social-media accounts of certain State Department officials.