California Water Service (Cal Water) is investigating recent hacking claims by the Iran-linked threat actor Handala, which published several gigabytes of data it allegedly stole from the utility’s systems.
Cal Water, one of the largest investor-owned water utilities in the United States, was apparently targeted by Handala in retaliation for the US’s recent attacks on Iran.
Handala, which purports to be a hacktivist collective but is widely believed to be a front for Iranian government hacking operations, claimed it could have disrupted the water supply but decided not to.
Instead the hackers leaked 5 GB of files allegedly stolen from Cal Water, and an analysis by threat intelligence firm Dataminr found that the leaked data included personal information.
Dataminr reported that the hackers apparently compromised a customer billing database and Cal Water’s internal RTKBase application.
