Congressmen ask DOJ to investigate water utility hack, warning it could happen anywhere
Three members of Congress are asking the U.S. Justice Department to investigate how hackers breached a water utility system near Pittsburgh
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Three members of Congress have asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate how foreign hackers breached a water authority near Pittsburgh, prompting the nation's top cyberdefense agency to warn other water and sewage-treatment utilities that they may be vulnerable.
In a letter released Thursday, U.S. Sens. John Fetterman and Bob Casey and U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio said Americans must know their drinking water and other basic infrastructure is safe from “nation-state adversaries and terrorist organizations.”
“Any attack on our nation’s critical infrastructure is unacceptable,” Fetterman, Casey and Deluzio wrote in their letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. “If a hack like this can happen here in western Pennsylvania, it can happen anywhere else in the United States.”
The compromised industrial control system was made in Israel, and a photo from the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, suggests the “hackivists” deliberately targeted that facility because of the equipment's link to Israel. The image of the device screen shows a message from the hackers that said: “Every equipment ‘made in Israel’ is Cyber Av3ngers legal target.”
A group using that name used identical language on X, formerly Twitter, and Telegram on Sunday. The group claimed in an Oct. 30 social media post to have hacked 10 water treatment stations in Israel, though it is not clear if they shut down any equipment.
Casey's office said it was told by U.S. officials that they believe Cyber Av3ngers is indeed behind the attack. The Aliquippa water authority's chairman, Matthew
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