The U.S. government warned that Siemens industrial control systems can be hacked. Not might be. Not could theoretically. Can be. Present tense. As in right now someone in Tehran is probably looking at a control panel for a water treatment plant in Ohio and wondering which button makes it stop doing water things.
Siemens manufactured devices that control critical infrastructure and apparently forgot to include the part where unauthorized people can't break into them. This is like selling deadbolts that open when you knock politely. Cybersecurity experts suspect Iran is behind attacks on U.S. water systems. Suspect is doing heavy lifting there. They know. Everyone knows. We're just being diplomatic because saying it out loud means we have to do something about it.
The warning comes as cyber incidents target water systems. Incidents. What a word. An incident is when you spill coffee on your keyboard. This is a foreign government gaining access to the infrastructure that keeps Americans from dying of cholera. But sure. Incidents.
Siemens built the digital equivalent of a glass house and municipalities bought it with taxpayer money because it was cheap. Now some guy in Cyber Command has to spend his Tuesday figuring out if the water in Akron is going to taste like Fanta because Iran got bored. This is what happens when you let procurement departments make security decisions. They optimized for price per unit and got exactly what they paid for.
Your portfolio is down eight percent this quarter and you're stress-eating Tums wondering if you should have bought the dip. A nation-state is inside the system that decides whether your tap water is potable. Those concerns are not equally pressing.
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