(TLP:CLEAR) Securin Cyber Threat Intelligence Report: Water & Wastewater Systems

Summary: The Securin Research Team recently released a Cyber Threat Intelligence Report focused on the water sector, analyzing 1,807 vulnerabilities affecting water and wastewater systems. The report highlights a steadily expanding attack surface—15% year-over-year growth in common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs)—with many exploits linked to nation-state actors and ransomware operations. The report notes that in the past few years the sector has shifted from a “soft target to an active battlefield.”

Analyst Note: The report underscores that the water sector’s risk is not only driven by high-profile threats, but also persistent unmitigated weaknesses. Dangerous vulnerabilities, including improper input validation, memory corruption, and default or hard-coded credentials, continue to enable real-world compromise of operational technology (OT) environments. Notably, adversaries are leveraging these weaknesses at every stage of the cyber kill chain, with capabilities spanning initial access through operational impact.

The report serves as a strong reminder to address foundational security gaps by prioritizing remediation of known vulnerabilities, eliminating default credentials, strengthening authentication controls, limiting unnecessary external exposure of OT and remote access systems, and enhancing monitoring to detect anomalous activity. Addressing these cores issues remains critical as threat actors continue to target the sector with increasing frequency and intent.

Original Source: https://www.securin.io/articles/cyber-threat-intelligence-report-water-wastewater-systems

Additional Reading:

• Cybersecurity Fundamentals for Water and Wastewater Utilities

Related WaterISAC PIRs: 6, 7, 7.1, 8, 9, 10, 10.1, 11, 12