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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One day AI may be capable of creating malware that threatens critical infrastructure.

But that day was not earlier this month, when reports surfaced of a new piece of malware seemingly configured to search for and sabotage Israeli water infrastructure, according to industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos. 

The malware, called ZionSiphon, was first identified by AI cybersecurity firm Darktrace, which said it was designed to target operational technology and industrial control system environments. The code scans the internet for IP addresses tied to water treatment and desalination plants owned or operated in Israel, with the goal of compromising them to sabotage the levels of chlorine and poison water supplies.

Strings in the malware’s binary code included the names of different components of the Israeli water sector, as well as politically-themed messaging, such as “In support of our brothers in Iran, Palestine, and Yemen against Zionist aggression.”

But a technical lead malware analyst at Dragos, Jimmy Wyles, called the malware nothing more than “hype,” claiming it poses no threat to water plants in Israel or anywhere else. 

For instance, whoever wrote the malware appears to have little knowledge of how operational technology works at Israeli water plants.

“The code is broken and shows little to no knowledge of dam desalination or ICS protocols,” wrote Wylie.

The developers also appeared to use AI to generate significant portions of the code, leading to hallucinations and errors. All the Windows-based process names and directory paths designed to confirm that a target was related to water desalination were filled with “fictional and likely LLM generated guesses.” The configuration files purportedly designed to manipulate chlorine levels were also fake and likely created using AI. 

Darktrace’s analysis notes that the malware sample they tested appears to be dysfunctional, citing an incorrect configuration in the code’s country targeting functions.

But Wylie wrote that the malware still would have been harmless to water treatment plants even when correctly configured, because the rest of the code was so riddled with “logic errors and invalid assumptions” that it would have been inoperable.

Similar maturity and logic issues were found in the malware’s USB infection and self-destruction capabilities. Wylie said Dragos was withholding additional technical analysis of the flaws plaguing ZionSiphon because they’re “not in the business of fixing malware for adversaries.”

The episode highlights an ongoing dispute around how much attention defenders – particularly those who work with operational technology – should give to more novel threats like AI-enabled hacking, versus more established tactics, techniques and procedures that have been successfully wielded by foreign hacking groups.

Operational technology – the systems that control or manipulate the machinery used in water facilities, electrical power plants and other industrial sectors – differs substantially from information technology environments. That presents challenges for both cybersecurity defenders and malicious hackers who often lack the industry-specific knowledge or skillset to design effective exploits.

To wit, Dragos claims there are publicly less than 10 malware samples capable of threatening industrial control systems. ZionSiphon is not one of them.

Wylie was critical of the way threat intelligence companies and media outlets initially framed the danger posed by the malware, saying it was overblown and likely diverted water sector cybersecurity resources away from more tangible threats, like Volt Typhoon, the Chinese-backed hacking group that U.S. intelligence officials say has burrowed deep into American critical infrastructure.

“Those responsible for protecting water treatment facilities and other critical infrastructure have finite time and attention,” Wylie wrote. “Spending either on ZionSiphon means spending less on threat groups like [Volt Typhoon], which have a demonstrated history of intrusions into those environments and are a far more pressing concern.”

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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 Trump administration is plotting an interagency body to confront malign hackers, pilot programs to secure critical infrastructure across states and other steps tied to its freshly-released cyber strategy, National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross said Monday.

The “interagency cell” will bring together agencies like the Justice Department, the Department of State, the FBI and the Pentagon, which will make it clear that going on cyber offense isn’t just about attacking enemies in cyberspace, Cairncross said.

“Sure, that’s part of it, but that’s not all of it,” he said at an event hosted by USTelecom. It will include diplomatic efforts, arrests and more, he said. “As President Trump has made clear, he expects results, and he’s empowered the team under him to go get them.”

A series of pilot programs will be catered to specific critical infrastructure industries in specific states, such as water in Texas and beef in South Dakota, Cairncross said. Different sectors operate at more or less mature levels, he said.

“One of the things that we are working to do is to align those sectors and prioritize those sectors in a way that makes sense,” he said.

Cairncross said the administration wants to share information with industry better, and will be looking as well at revising regulations in some instances. One of those instances is the Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2023 incident disclosure rule, which drew some of the most vehement industry opposition under the Biden administration’s’ pursuit of cyber regulations. The idea is to make sure they “make sense for industry,” Cairncross said.

But the administration also will have things it seeks from the private sector. That will include bringing together CEOs and sending the message to them that “you need to dedicate some real resources,” he said.

Cairncross has spoken before about wanting to establish an academy to address education and training in a nation with persistent cybersecurity job openings, but there’s more attached to it, he said.

The effort, which Cairncross said the administration would release details on soon, will also include a foundry (which “will be able to scale with private capital new innovation, and deploy it more quickly”) and an accelerator (“so when there’s preceded financing on on projects to really ramp that up and be able to scale as well and overcome some of the procurement hurdles that are often based in in this space”).

Cairncross said at a second event Monday that another forthcoming step was a law enforcement pilot program to better share information with state and local governments.

“We’re looking for ways to streamline information sharing from the USG side,” Cairncross said at a Billington Cybersecurity event, using the acronym for “U.S. government.” “Often, ‘how’ we know things is extremely sensitive, ‘what’ we know is less so,” he said. The goal is “to figure out how to communicate that in a helpful, actionable way.”

Updated, 3/9/26: to include comments about law enforcement pilot program.

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