Cybersecurity
U.S. Water and Power Are Shockingly Vulnerable to Cyberhacks
- Company costs and government indifference are culprits
- The risk has been known for years with little action taken
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When the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was hacked in 2018, it took a mere six hours. Early this year, an intruder lurked in hundreds of computers related to water systems across the U.S. In Portland, Oregon, burglars installed malicious computers onto a grid providing power to a chunk of the Northwest.
Two of those cases -- L.A. and Portland -- were tests. The water threat was real, discovered by cybersecurity firm Dragos.