Israel thwarted attack on water systems

Yigal Unna, head of the Israel National Cyber Directorate, told on the CybertechLive Asia conference that Israel had thwarted a major cyber attack on the country's water systems last month, calling the attempt "the first to use cyber technology aiming to cause damage to real life and not to IT or data”.

The synchronized and organized attack was intended to disrupt the national infrastructure. Had Israel’s National Cyber Directorate not detected the attack in real time, chlorine or other chemicals could have been mixed into the water source in the wrong proportions and resulted in a “harmful and disastrous” outcome, according to Unna, who also predicts that recent events have ushered in a new era of cyber warfare.

[Update 29/07/2020] Official Water Authority sources have confirmed to ZDNet that Israel's water management facilities suffered two more cyberattacks last June. The first attack affected agricultural water pumps in the upper part of the Galilee, while the second took place in the central Mateh Yehuda province. The official authority confirmed that the affected facilities were repaired immediately and that no real damage occurred.