Cybersecurity

Time to rewrite the rules on cyberattacks

ABOUT 30 miles north of New York City, in Rye, N.Y., sits the Arthur R. Bowman Dam, a reinforced-concrete gravity dam constructed a century ago for ice-making, and now primarily used for flood control, with a sluice gatethat can control water permitted to flow downstream. Between Aug. 28 and Sept. 18, 2013, a hacker sneaked into computer systems that monitor the damand move the sluice gate.

According to a grand jury indictment unsealed Thursday in federal court in New York City, the hacker was Hamid Firoozi, 34, the network manager for a computer security firm, ITSec Team, based in Iran. Mr. Firoozi collected information about the dam’s water levels and temperature, and the status of the sluice gate. He might have been able to open the gate, but, fortunately, it was manually disconnected for maintenance.