Новини

In early November, Nigeria launched its first interconnected solar hybrid mini grid in Nasarawa State to make electricity more reliable, renewable and accessible. Gibson Emeka has this story from Abuja, Nigeria, Grace Oyenubi narrates.
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A small western Pennsylvania water authority was just one of many organizations breached in the United States by Iran-affiliated hackers who targeted a specific industrial control device because it is Israeli-made, U.S. and Israeli authorities say.

“The victims span multiple U.S. states,” the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, as well as Israel’s National Cyber Directorate said in an advisory emailed to The Associated Press late Friday.

They did not say how many organizations were hacked or otherwise describe them.

Matthew Mottes, the chairman of the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa, which discovered it had been hacked on Nov. 25, said Thursday that federal officials had told him the same group also breached four other utilities and an aquarium.

Cybersecurity experts say that while there is no evidence of Iranian involvement in the Oct. 7 attack into Israel by Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza, they expected state-backed Iranian hackers and pro-Palestinian hacktivists to step up cyberattacks on Israeli and its allies in its aftermath. And that has happened.

The multiagency advisory explained what CISA had not when it confirmed the Pennsylvania hack Wednesday — that other industries outside water and water-treatment facilities use the same equipment — Vision Series programmable logic controllers made by Unitronics — and were also potentially vulnerable.

Those industries include “energy, food and beverage manufacturing and healthcare,” the advisory says. The devices regulate processes including pressure, temperature and fluid flow.

The Aliquippa hack promoted workers to temporarily halt pumping in a remote station that regulates water pressure for two nearby towns, leading crews to switch to manual operation. The hackers left a digital calling card on the compromised device saying all Israeli-made equipment is “a legal target.”

The multiagency advisory said it was not known if the hackers had tried to penetrate deeper into breached networks.

The advisory says the hackers, who call themselves “Cyber Av3ngers,” are affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which the U.S. designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2019.

The group targeted the Unitronics devices at least since Nov. 22, it said.

An online search Saturday with the Shodan service identified more than 200 such internet-connected devices in the U.S. and more than 1,700 globally.

The advisory notes that Unitronics devices ship with a default password, a practice experts discourage as it makes them more vulnerable to hacking. Best practices call for devices to require a unique password to be created out of the box. It says the hackers likely accessed affected devices by “exploiting cybersecurity weaknesses, including poor password security and exposure to the internet.”

In response to the Aliquippa hack, three Pennsylvania congressmen asked the U.S. Justice Department in a letter to investigate. Americans must know their drinking water and other basic infrastructure is safe from “nation-state adversaries and terrorist organizations,” U.S. Sens. John Fetterman and Bob Casey and U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio said.

Cyber Av3ngers claimed in an Oct. 30 social media post to have hacked 10 water treatment stations in Israel, though it is not clear if they shut down any equipment.

Unitronics has not responded to the AP queries about the hacks.

The attack came less than a month after a federal appeals court decision prompted the EPA to rescind a rule that would have obliged U.S public water systems to include cybersecurity testing in their regular federally mandated audits. The rollback was triggered by a federal appeals court decision in a case brought by Missouri, Arkansas and Iowa, and joined by a water utility trade group.

The Biden administration has been trying to shore up cybersecurity of critical infrastructure — more than 80% of which is privately owned — and has imposed regulations on sectors including electric utilities, gas pipelines and nuclear facilities. But many experts complain that too many vital industries are permitted to self-regulate.
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The U.S. proposed new guidelines Friday spelling out which electric vehicles will be eligible for tax credits, ruling out those that contain batteries or minerals sourced from China and other nations that have fallen out of favor with the U.S.

The restrictions dictate which clean energy vehicles will qualify for a subsidy of up to $7,500 under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a federal law promoting sustainable, domestic energy production.

Only about 20 out of the more than 100 electric vehicles on the U.S. market qualify for a tax credit as it is. That number may be further reduced when this regulation goes into effect.

If a clean energy battery went through an assembly line owned by any “foreign entity of concern,” the car it will go into would be immediately disqualified from earning its owner any tax breaks from the U.S. government, starting in 2024.

The new rules target firms incorporated or headquartered in China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, among others, as well as companies where 25% or more of the equity interest or board seats are controlled by those countries.

From 2025 onward, electric vehicles made with critical minerals, such as lithium, nickel and cobalt, mined or processed by any “foreign entity of concern” will also be ineligible for subsidies.

The rules will be open to public feedback from automotive leaders for several weeks and are subject to change depending on industry recommendations.

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse. 
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Developers at the University of Maryland are using a holographic camera to capture people’s movements in three dimensions for what could be high-impact training, education and entertainment. It is technology with the power to transform how we learn and entertain ourselves. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. VOA footage by Adam Greenbaum.
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