GoKawiilSource: Blue Lake Wastewater Treatment
The Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) agency activated its cybersecurity incident response capabilities across the entire state after hackers targeted more than 30 community water systems in “a coordinated cyberattack.”
The attacks occurred on Sunday and Monday, July 26 and 27, and targeted operational technology (OT) systems at local water utilities.
In a statement early Monday, the City of Braham said that the water plant was “offline for an unknown reason.”
“Crews are actively troubleshooting the problem and will restore services as soon as possible,” the city said in a communication to its residents.
An update from the City of Braham about three hours later informed that the water plant was back online, filtering and treating water “as expected” and that residents could return to normal water use.
“Crews identified that the water plant outage was a result of a malicious cyber-attack of computerized operating systems by unknown actors,” city officials said.
According to local media, other communities reported temporary equipment malfunctions since Sunday and switched to manual operations or implemented contingency plans to maintain normal services [1, 2].
MNIT is working with federal, state, local, Tribal, and private-sector partners to investigate the incident and to fortify the security of Minnesota's critical infrastructure.
“As MNIT cybersecurity teams assess the cyber impacts, they are sharing threat intelligence, providing guidance on response efforts and best practices, and helping affected utilities contain, investigate, and remediate damages from the attack,” MNIT says.
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