Report: US accounts for most PLCs subjected to Iranian targeting

Almost 3,900, or nearly 75%, of 5,219 internet-exposed Rockwell Automation/Allen-Bradley programmable logic controllers used in critical infrastructure entities that are vulnerable to ongoing targeting by Iranian state-sponsored threat actors are in the U.S., reports CyberScoop.

Cellular system connections were observed across most of the online PLCs, with almost 50% of devices worldwide linked to Verizon's wireless network, a report from Censys revealed. Other exposed services on the devices' ports exacerbate the potential attack surface, according to researchers, who discovered that most of the vulnerable PLCs were on outdated software.

Such findings come after several U.S. critical infrastructure sectors were noted by a joint alert from multiple U.S. federal and intelligence agencies, including the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the National Security Agency, to have been disrupted following Iranian cyberattacks aimed at the vulnerable PLCs amid the U.S. and Israel's ongoing war against Iran.