AP News70%
Cyberattacks on Minnesota water systems investigated as officials warn about Iranian hackers 40%
By JAMIE STENGLE33% ERIC TUCKER47%
7/30/2026, 3:42:32 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 12 faulty reasoning types, including Anchoring Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Confirmation Bias, with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 23.5% saturation with 83 hits. Analysis detected 406 faulty-reasoning hits from 353 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 39.6% and a BS Rank of 40% (15,495 of 25,563 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 60.60% of the article peer group.
Authorities were working Thursday to find the source of cyberattacks that targeted over 30 water systems in Minnesota and came amid warnings that Iranian hackers have been focused on such systems.
Minnesota IT Services said state officials had yet to identify who was behind the attacks that took place Sunday and Monday.
There were no reports that residents had been impacted by the attacks, though one city asked residents to conserve water for a couple hours while they tried to determine what was wrong.
The FBI, which is investigating, has not publicly identified a culprit and a spokesperson declined to say Thursday who the bureau thought might be responsible.
The FBI, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other agencies warned in an advisory last week that Iranian hackers have been targeting water and wastewater systems and the operational controls other critical infrastructure sectors.
“I think most credible researchers and responders would be right to treat it like it’s Iran until proven otherwise,” added Kaiser, who is now the senior vice president of Halcyon’s Ransomware Research Center.
“When it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s really important to call it out.”
For a few hours on Monday, the city of Braham asked residents to minimize water use as they tried to determine why the water plant was offline.
The city said in a news release that the water plant outage was due to a cyberattack, but it didn’t cause any issue with water quality.
The city said the attackers shut down the operating controls that shut down the well and water treatment plant.
That left the city for a time only able to provide residents with the water held in the water tower.
In Plymouth, a city of about 80,000 located outside of Minneapolis, officials said on social media that their water infrastructure communications had been restored by Tuesday afternoon following a cyberattack.
The city said crews were able to continue operating the system during the outage and it didn’t have any impact on water levels or quality.
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