The Senate’s top Democrat called on the Department of Homeland Security Friday to work closely with state and local governments to defend against artificial intelligence-strengthened hacks. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to make sure state, local, tribal and territorial (SLTT) governments aren’t left behind as AI models advance, posing new hacking threats.

“There is a race between cybersecurity defenders and AI-enabled hacking — and there’s no time to waste,” Schumer wrote.

“While the White House has reportedly begun hosting meetings about its internal security priorities following these frontier AI cyber breakthroughs, it is glaringly obvious that the Department of Homeland Security needs an updated plan for coordinating these efforts with [state, local, tribal and territorial] governments and implementing procedures to reduce the risk of disruptive cyberattacks enabled by frontier AI,” he stated.

Schumer said he was worried about the capabilities of DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to carry out that coordination, given federal funding cuts to the Multistate Information Sharing and Analysis Center, and the lack of a Senate-confirmed CISA director for the duration of the second Trump administration.

Schumer wants a plan from DHS by July 1 on coordinating with state and local governments on a range of questions, such as how to identify top AI talent, carry out rapid patching and conduct risk assessments.

“AI is changing the cyber battlefield fast — and we cannot let hackers get there first,” Schumer said in comments accompanying the letter. “Hospitals, power grids, water systems, schools, elections, and emergency services cannot be left exposed while criminal gangs and state-backed hackers race to exploit new AI tools. DHS must immediately help states and localities find and fix vulnerabilities before Americans are hit with outages, disruptions, and attacks that could put lives and livelihoods at risk.”

CISA is using AI to help on the defensive side internally, agency officials recently said.

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Dubbed Lotus Wiper, the malware targets recovery mechanisms, overwrites drives, and systematically deletes files.

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The fallout and potential exposure from Iran’s state-backed targeting of U.S. critical infrastructure extends to more than 5,200 internet-connected devices, researchers at Censys said in a threat intelligence brief Wednesday. 

 Of the programmable logic controllers manufactured by Rockwell Automation/Allen-Bradley that Censys identified as  potentially exposed to Iranian government attackers, nearly 3,900, or about 3 out of every 4, are based in the United States. 

The cybersecurity firm identified the devices based on details multiple federal agencies shared in a joint alert Tuesday, and published additional indicators of compromise, including operator IPs and other threat hunting queries.

Federal authorities earlier this week warned that Iranian government attackers have exploited devices that control industrial automation processes and disrupted multiple sectors during the past month. Some victims also experienced financial losses as a result of the attacks, officials said. 

The operational technology devices are deployed across the energy sector, water and wastewater systems, and U.S. government services and facilities. 

Censys scans spotted 5,219 internet-exposed Rockwell Automation/Allen-Bradley PLC hosts shortly after the joint alert was issued by the FBI, National Security Agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Department and U.S. Cyber Command. 

Researchers at Censys determined most of the exposed devices are connected via cellular systems, posing a significant risk to remote field deployments. Nearly half of the devices globally are connected to Verizon’s wireless network and 13% are connected to AT&T’s infrastructure.

“These devices are almost certainly field-deployed in physical infrastructure (pump stations, substations, municipal facilities) with cellular modems as their sole internet path,” Censys researchers wrote in the report. 

The potential attack surface is also amplified by additional services exposed in other ports on these devices, a discovery that Censys warned could allow attackers to gain direct paths to operations beyond PLC exploitation. 

Researchers fingerprinted MicroLogix and CompactLogix models exposed to the latest threat campaign and published a list of the 15 most-exposed products. Many of the most prominent devices are running end-of-life software, a compounding risk that could allow attackers to prioritize unpatched devices upon scanning, according to Censys.

The attacks date back to at least March, following the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran, and were underway as other Iranian government-backed attackers claimed other victims, including Stryker and local governments.

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Iranian government hackers are launching disruptive cyberattacks on American energy and water infrastructure, U.S. government agencies “urgently” warned Tuesday.

The hackers are taking aim at devices and systems that control industrial processes, and have harmed victims in the last month following the onset of U.S.-Israel strikes against Iran, according to the joint alert from the FBI, National Security Agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Department and Cyber Command.

“Iran-affiliated advanced persistent threat (APT) actors are conducting exploitation activity targeting internet-facing operational technology (OT) devices, including programmable logic controllers (PLCs) manufactured by Rockwell Automation/Allen-Bradley,” the alert states. “This activity has led to PLC disruptions across several U.S. critical infrastructure sectors through malicious interactions with the project file and manipulation of data on human machine interface (HMI) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) displays.”

U.S. government agencies have warned before about Iranian hackers going after similar targets with those similar methods. The first such warning came after an Iranian government-linked group took credit for attacking a Pennsylvania water facility in late 2023.

Since March of this year, however, the agencies said they have seen new victims emerge from an advanced persistent threat group tied to Iran.

“The authoring agencies identified (through engagements with victim organizations) an Iranian-affiliated APT-group that disrupted the function of PLCs,” the alert reads. “These PLCs were deployed across multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors (including Government Services and Facilities, WWS, and Energy sectors) within a wide variety of industrial automation processes. Some of the victims experienced operational disruption and financial loss.”

The earlier campaign compromised at least 75 devices, the alert states.

The latest disruptions include “maliciously interacting with project files, and manipulating data displayed on HMI and SCADA displays,” according to the agencies’ warning.

After the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran began, Tehran-connected hackers claimed victims including major medtech company Stryker, local governments and more.

The FBI warned last month that Iranian hackers were deploying malware over the Telegram app, although that campaign also predated the current Iran conflict.

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The House Energy and Commerce committee unanimously passed a package of bipartisan cybersecurity bills Thursday targeting the energy sector, including legislation that would reauthorize and fund a critical federal cybersecurity assistance program for rural electric utilities across the country.

The Rural and Municipal Utility Cybersecurity Act, introduced by Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, and Jennifer McClellan, D-Va., reauthorizes the Rural and Municipal Utility Advanced Cybersecurity program at the Department of Energy, which funnels hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants and technical assistance every year to help rural utilities and cooperatives defend against cyberattacks and other threats.

The program was created through the 2022 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and is widely viewed in the energy sector as a cybersecurity lifeline for badly underfunded electric utilities that would otherwise be a weak link in the nation’s energy cybersecurity or reliability.

Smaller utilities play a crucial role supporting the nation’s energy grids, but many lack sophisticated IT or cybersecurity operations. Industry officials say it’s not uncommon for some entities to have one or two IT or cybersecurity officials, if that. The bill approves $250 million in additional grant funding for the program over the next five years, part of which would go to implementing more modern cybersecurity technologies and enhancing information sharing.  

Speaking ahead of the vote, Miller-Meeks said her Iowa district’s electric cooperative must serve rate payers across 20 different counties and faces “the same threats as metropolitan systems but with fewer resources.”

“At a time when cybersecurity attacks on our critical infrastructure are escalating and we have not yet authorized an appropriations bill for DHS, small and rural utilities need resources to defend against nation state actors and sophisticated threats,” she said.

Ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., leveled his own criticism, claiming that the reauthorization was “held up for countless months due to senseless delays” by Energy officials.

Another bill, the Energy Emergency Leadership Act, would move responsibility for the cybersecurity functions of the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response under a single, Senate-confirmed assistant secretary.

The bill’s chief sponsor, Rep. Laurel Lee, R-Fla., directly cited reports of ongoing threats to the nation’s energy sector from Chinese state-sponsored hackers as a driver of the legislation.

“At the same time our electric grid faces an increasingly complex threat landscape, state sponsored threats like Volt Typhoon have actively targeted U.S. critical infrastructure, including our electric grid,” said Lee. “These are real and ongoing threats from foreign adversaries seeking to undermine our national security and economic stability.”

The committee also passed bills that require states to include cybersecurity in their energy plans, clarify the Secretary of Energy’s role promoting and coordinating cybersecurity of the nation’s oil and natural gas pipelines, and codify a pilot Energy Threat Analysis Center.

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Taiwan endured a year-long intensified cyber offensive from China in 2025, that targeted the government and critical infrastructure — with an increasing focus on the energy and hospital sectors, according to a Taiwan government analysis published this week.

Cyberattacks from China rose 6% compared to 2024, the National Security Bureau analysis concluded. Every major sector saw intrusion attempts from “China’s cyber army,” with 2.63 million intrusion attempts per day.

The attacks ranged from ransomware attacks attempting to steal data from hospitals and sell it on the dark web, to more politically-oriented missions.

“China’s cyberattacks have been conducted in conjunction with political and military coercive actions,” the bureau wrote. “In 2025, relevant hacking and intrusion operations against Taiwan demonstrated a certain extent of correlation with the joint combat readiness patrols carried out by the People’s Liberation Army. In addition, China would ramp up hacking activities during Taiwan’s major ceremonies, the issuances of important government statements, or overseas visits by high-level Taiwanese officials.”

Beijing considers Taiwan its territory, and U.S. military officials have for years warned of a possible pending Chinese invasion of the island, with predictions that 2027 could be the pivotal year. 

China deployed a variety of hacking techniques in 2025, but exploitation of software and hardware vulnerabilities factored into more than half of the operations, according to Taiwan.

Last year’s revelations about Chinese infiltration of major telecommunications providers extended into Taiwan, with hackers targeting telecom networks there to get into sensitive and backup communications links, the bureau wrote. 

“The hacking activities were also extended to upstream, midstream, and downstream suppliers in the semiconductor and defense sectors,” the bureau said. “Those campaigns sought to steal advanced technologies, industrial plans, and decision-making intelligence.”

The U.S. government should fortify Taiwan against China’s cyber-enabled economy warfare (CEEW), Jack Burnham, a senior research analyst in the China Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote in response to the Taiwan report.

“As Beijing continues to target Taiwan across the cyber domain, the United States should prepare to counter a Chinese CEEW campaign aimed at Taipei,” he wrote. “Washington should strengthen its efforts to work against a potential blockade by practicing convoy operations, pursuing a regional energy stockpile, assisting in strengthening the resilience of Taiwan’s critical infrastructure by deploying technical advisors, and signaling its resolve to deter Beijing well in advance of a potential crisis.”

China routinely denies all hacking allegations, and has leveled its own accusations of hacking malfeasance at Taiwan.

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Attackers associated with Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) have targeted Western-based critical infrastructure with a special focus on the energy sector as part of an ongoing campaign dating back to 2021, Amazon Threat Intelligence said in a report Monday. 

The threat group simplified operations earlier this year by shifting away from vulnerability exploitation to focus on misconfigured network edge devices hosted on Amazon Web Services as the primary initial access vector, CJ Moses, chief information security officer of Amazon Integrated Security, said in a blog post. 

Researchers said malicious infrastructure used by the attackers overlaps with operations linked to Sandworm, also known as APT44 and Seashell Blizzard, a detail that gives them confidence the activity is associated with Russia’s GRU. 

Amazon did not say how many attacks it’s attributed to the campaign, nor how the pace of activity has changed since the first wave of attacks occurred in 2021. The company said it has notified customers affected by the intrusions, remediated compromised EC2 instances and shared intelligence with partners and affected vendors to aid further investigations.

The Russia state-sponsored threat group has continued to target multiple Western-based organizations in the energy sector including electric utilities, energy providers and managed security service providers specializing in the industry, according to Amazon. 

Researchers said the threat group has also targeted collaboration platforms, source code repositories, organizations with cloud-based network infrastructure, critical infrastructure providers in North America and Europe, and telecom providers across multiple regions. 

Attacks typically begin with a compromised customer network edge device hosted on AWS, followed by attempts to capture data traversing the network in a bid to steal credentials and reuse those credentials against victim organizations’ other services and infrastructure to maintain access, according to Amazon.

Moses insists the compromise of network edge devices hosted on AWS is not due to a weakness in its  infrastructure, but rather improper device setup from customers. Attackers associated with Russia’s GRU have targeted enterprise routers and routing infrastructure, virtual private networks for large organizations, remote-access gateways and network-management appliances. 

The campaign initially relied on vulnerability exploitation from 2021 to 2024, including CVE-2022-26318 affecting WatchGuard, CVE-2021-26084 and CVE-2023-22518 affecting Confluence and CVE-2023-27532 affecting Veeam, researchers said.

Yet, targeting shifted to misconfigured network edge devices this year, which allowed attackers to achieve the same strategic goals at a lower cost. 

“While customer misconfiguration targeting has been ongoing since at least 2022, the actor maintained sustained focus on this activity in 2025 while reducing investment in zero-day and N-day exploitation,” Moses said in the blog post. “The actor accomplishes this while significantly reducing the risk of exposing their operations through more detectable vulnerability exploitation activity.”

Sandworm is one of the most notorious state-sponsored threat groups of the past decade. The group primarily targets government, defense, transportation, energy, media and civil society organizations in Russia’s near abroad. It has repeatedly targeted Western electoral systems and institutions, including in NATO member countries. On three separate occasions, the group has succeeded in using a cyberattack to disrupt electricity distribution in Ukraine.

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The Justice Department has charged a Ukrainian national with conducting cyberattacks on critical infrastructure worldwide as part of two Russian state-sponsored hacking operations that targeted water systems, food processing facilities and government networks across the United States and allied nations.

Victoria Eduardovna Dubranova, 33, was arraigned on a second indictment Tuesday after being extradited to the U.S. earlier this year. She faces charges related to her alleged work with CyberArmyofRussia_Reborn, known as CARR, and NoName057(16), two groups federal prosecutors say received backing from Moscow to advance Russian geopolitical interests. 

Dubranova pleaded not guilty in both cases.

The indictments describe operations that evolved from distributed denial of service attacks to more destructive intrusions into industrial control systems. CARR, according to prosecutors, was founded and funded by Russia’s Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, known as the GRU. NoName057(16) emerged from the Center for the Study and Network Monitoring of the Youth Environment, an information technology organization established by presidential order in Russia in October 2018.

Brett Leatherman, the FBI’s assistant director in its cyber division, said the charges against Dubranova are the first time the U.S. has charged someone under the law designed to protect water systems.

“Let me emphasize, the FBI doesn’t just track cyber adversaries. We call them out and bring them to justice,” Leatherman said on a press call Wednesday. “That’s what today demonstrates.”

Both groups claimed credit for hundreds of attacks beginning in 2022, following the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. CARR maintained a Telegram channel with more than 75,000 followers and at times had over 100 members, including juveniles, according to the indictment. The group received financial support from a figure using the moniker “Cyber_1ce_Killer,” which federal authorities associate with at least one GRU officer.

The attacks attributed to CARR resulted in tangible damage to U.S. infrastructure. Public drinking water systems in several states experienced damage to control systems that caused hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to spill. In November 2024, an attack on a meat processing facility in Los Angeles spoiled thousands of pounds of meat and triggered an ammonia leak that forced an evacuation. The group also targeted U.S. election infrastructure and websites for nuclear regulatory entities.

NoName057(16) operated differently, developing proprietary software called DDoSia that recruited volunteers worldwide to participate in attacks. The group published daily leaderboards on Telegram ranking participants and paid top volunteers in cryptocurrency. Between March 2022 and June 2025, the group conducted more than 1,500 attacks on government agencies, financial institutions, railways and ports in Ukraine and NATO countries including Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Norway, Poland and Sweden.

The group targeted Dutch infrastructure during the June 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague. Volunteers who downloaded DDoSia were required to read a manifesto describing pro-Russian geopolitical motivations before participating in attacks on targets selected by administrators.

Federal investigators from multiple agencies, including the FBI, CISA, NSA, Department of Energy and EPA, issued a joint advisory warning that pro-Russia hacktivist groups target minimally secured internet-facing connections to infiltrate operational technology control devices. The EPA emphasized the threat to public water systems, noting the defendant’s actions put communities and drinking water resources at risk.

Chris Butera, CISA’s acting deputy executive assistant director for cybersecurity, said Wednesday that organizations responsible for operating critical infrastructure should understand these groups are “actively engaging in opportunistic, low sophistication, malicious cyber activity across multiple sectors to gain notoriety and create mayhem.”

“The single most important thing people can do to protect themselves is to reduce the number of operational technology devices exposed to the public-facing internet,” Butera said. 

Dubranova faces one count of conspiracy to damage protected computers in the NoName case, carrying a maximum five-year sentence. The CARR indictment charges her with conspiracy to damage protected computers and tamper with public water systems, damaging protected computers, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft. If convicted on all CARR charges, she faces up to 27 years in federal prison.

The State Department announced rewards of up to $2 million for information on individuals associated with CARR and up to $10 million for information related to NoName057(16). Two CARR members, Yuliya Vladimirovna Pankratova and Denis Olegovich Degtyarenko, were previously sanctioned by the Treasury Department in July 2024. Pankratova allegedly served as administrator of CARR, while Degtyarenko is described as a primary hacker who accessed a U.S. energy company’s supervisory control and data acquisition system.

The investigations are part of Operation Red Circus, an FBI initiative to disrupt Russian state-sponsored cyber threats to U.S. critical infrastructure. By late 2024, prosecutors say CARR administrators grew dissatisfied with GRU support and created a new group called Z-Pentest that employs similar tactics.

Trials are scheduled for Feb. 3, 2026, in the NoName matter and April 7, 2026, in the CARR case.

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A House Republican introduced legislation Tuesday aimed at deterring cyberattacks against the United States at a time when the Trump administration is prioritizing the punishment of malicious hackers.

Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, revived legislation he first sponsored in 2022, the Cyber Deterrence and Response Act. The legislation would direct the executive branch to formally designate foreign parties behind major cyberattacks against the United States as a “critical cyber threat actor” who would be subject to sanctions.  It also would establish a framework for attributing who’s behind cyber attacks, including contributions from cyber agencies and threat intelligence companies.

“As cyberattacks in the United States grow more sophisticated and widespread, we must ensure the Trump administration and all future administrations have a strong framework to hold bad actors accountable and safeguard our national security,” Pfluger said in a news release. “Protecting America’s critical infrastructure from malicious cyberattacks is essential, and this bill does exactly that.”

The legislation is the latest reflection of congressional dismay that began growing last year in response to the Salt Typhoon cyberespionage campaign that infiltrated telecommunications networks, and the sense that the United States wasn’t doing enough to make hackers pay for their behavior.

At a hearing Tuesday, Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Tex., said the United States needs to do a better job of working “together to detect and deter attacks in real time.”

The Trump administration has said deterrence is one of the first pillars of its forthcoming cyber strategy.

The definition of “critical cyber threat actor” under Pfluger’s bill applies to hackers who disrupt the availability of computer networks, compromise computers that provide services in critical infrastructure, steal significant personal data or trade secrets, destabilize the financial or energy sectors or undermine the election process.

The president could waive sanctions against those designees if it explains its reasoning to Congress in writing, a common clause of sanctions legislation.

Pfluger’s measure is updated in some ways from its 2022 incarnation, such as by giving the Office of the National Cyber Director the leading role in designating critical cyber actors.

The legislation draws on bills that former Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla, introduced in past years. That legislation won House approval in 2018, but never advanced further.

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Lisa Woody // On the 23rd of December, a cyber attack left hundreds of thousands of people in the Ukrainian region of Ivano-Frankivsk without power. This was the first confirmed […]

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