Israel's Water Authority Hit With Three Cyber Attacks Within Just A Few Months

Sometimes nation-states don’t play well together. Two recent attacks on Israel points to that fact. Blamed on Iran, officials said there were some attacks on Israel’s infrastructure that took place in June, but didn’t cause any damage to Israel’s water supply system. The concern is that if the attacks, as well as the one that was back in April were successful, the attackers could have messed with the chlorine levels in the water and caused poisoning to the population that depends on that water supply.

The attacks were on small, agricultural drainage installations that the Water Authority said were repaired immediately by staff at the installations.

Back and forth attacks like these are not new in the cyber world. In fact, Iran and the United States have had their own issues in the past—recall Stuxnet, a computer worm that specifically exploits Windows zero-day vulnerabilities and targets centrifuges that are used to produce enriched uranium. Stuxnet is believed to have been developed by the U.S. and used against Iran.

In this case between Iran and Israel, no harm seems to have been done, but the Israel National Cyber-Directorate and the Water Authority urged the water treatment facilities to immediately change passwords for their equipment.

It’s good practice to regularly change passwords for all systems, no matter the industry, but especially those that are critical, like utility systems. Pay particular attention to administrator passwords. Infrastructure has been targeted at an increasing level lately, so keeping on top of cyber security is paramount to keep those depending on the services safe. Every person who has administrative rights should have separate login credentials and these should never be shared. Remember to always use strong passwords. These should include:

• At least 8 characters
• Upper- and lower-case letters
• At least one number
• At least one special character

They should not include personal information such as birthdates or addresses or be actual words. In fact, the crazier they are, the better.

Every organization should stay on top of cybersecurity practices. This means not only securing the perimeter of the network with cyber security tools, but also providing continuous training to anyone logging into the network. Threats change and evolve. Older ones go dormant and then appear again, usually modified and more dangerous. Be sure to protect your network.

Just because you may not be in a critical infrastructure industry, doesn’t mean precautions should not be taken that are equal to those for security purposes. All businesses are targeted these days and a data breach can be costly, or even put a small business out of business.