MN: CYBERATTACKS TARGET MINNESOTA WATER SYSTEMS
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MINNESOTA (WCCO) — A “coordinated cyberattack” targeted more than 30 Minnesota community water systems on Sunday and Monday, the state’s IT Services department announced Tuesday.
The attack briefly shut down a water plant in Braham, Minnesota, on Monday morning, officials in the east-central city said. Three other communities reported attempted attacks on Monday: Maple Plain, Plymouth and South St. Paul.
As of early Tuesday afternoon, officials have yet to provide a full list of the impacted cities.
IT Services says it has activated a statewide response to the attacks and its teams are continuing to “assess the cyber impacts.”
“MNIT will continue working with its partners to investigate the incident, support recovery efforts, strengthen cybersecurity protections, and help ensure Minnesota’s critical infrastructure remains secure and resilient,” officials said. “Additional information will be shared as it becomes available.”
MNIT also says the Minnesota Department of Health is directly working with the targeted water systems “to help ensure public health remains protected,” officials said, adding it’s unclear if any cities are asking “their residents modify their drinking water usage.”
John Israel from MNIT says it’s an attack on critical infrastructure on a scale not seen before.
“All signs are pointing to disruption, not trying to get a financial gain or get an actual public impact. I think this is about disruption of services,” Israel said.
For experts like Craig Sixta, chief technology officer of Element Technologies, it’s a sign things need to change, even if it comes at a cost.
“These water treatment facilities are going to have to become more secure, put in more controls in place,” Sixta said. “That’s probably going to mean higher water bills.”
The City of Braham said in a Facebook post at 9:34 a.m. Monday that its water plant was offline for an unknown reason. Just under two hours later, officials said the facility was back online and that the cause of the outage was a “malicious cyber-attack of computerized operating systems by unknown actors.”
Braham officials said the attack shut down the “operating controls,” which resulted in the shutdown of the well and water treatment plant. They added that it did not cause any physical issues to the facility, nor did it impact water quality or safety.
“The City of Braham’s Public works crews were able to quickly determine the issue and mediate the cause of the outage,” city officials said in a news release.
Braham’s city administrator is requesting that the city’s “system vulnerability study” be evaluated to identify and mitigate any vulnerabilities or potential vulnerabilities exposed by the attack.
The release also said the city was informed that at least four other communities were attacked “with the same result.”
The document didn’t name the locations, though officials in South St. Paul, Minnesota, said Monday afternoon that they identified a cybersecurity incident involving technology used for parts of the city’s water utility system.
South St. Paul officials said that while the incident impacted some automated controls, steps that were taken allowed Public Works staff to maintain normal water and wastewater operations.
The Twin Cities suburb of Plymouth may also have been targeted, according to city officials. In a Facebook post, they said an issue impacting communications at two of the city’s water towers and multiple lift stations that began late Sunday is believed to have been caused by a cyberattack.
“Water levels and water quality are unaffected – the water is safe and there is no need for the public to adjust consumption,” Plymouth officials said in the post. “The issue is limited to equipment connected via cellular communications within the system, and crews have continued operating as normal through manual procedures.”
Officials in Maple Plain, located on the west side of Hennepin County, said they identified a cybersecurity incident involving the city’s water utility technology early on Monday. The incident affected “certain automated control functions,” but city workers have been able to maintain normal operations.
The Maple Plain City Council held an emergency meeting on Monday afternoon to review response efforts and talk about measures to protect “critical infrastructure and public services,” according to the city. Leaders say the city’s water is safe to drink.
City Administrator Jacob Schillander says the safety of residents “is of the utmost concern.”
“We’ve got this, we’ve got partners we can work with, systems in place. We’re going to do our very best to keep things moving forward,” Schillander said.
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