US state, local governments warned of Iran war-related cyber intrusions

U.S. state and local governments were noted by the Center for Internet Security's Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center to be at risk of heightened "low-level cyber activity," including distributed denial-of-service intrusions, from Iran following joint U.S.-Israel strikes against the country, which led to the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to StateScoop.

With Iran and its allies, Russia and China, already mobilizing hacking campaigns in the wake of the attack, U.S. state and local government officials have been urged by MS-ISAC to immediately remediate critical and cloud infrastructure, leverage firewalls and content delivery networks, and limit the availability of data on their organizations and employees. Similar advice has been given by Tanium Senior Director of Security and Product Design Research Melissa Bischoping.

"We're not currently seeing a lot of credible, validated campaigns targeted specifically targeting state and local infrastructure, but and it's an important but that doesn't mean there's not a risk that people need to be aware of and that organizations need to be planning for, because Iran does have a history of targeting municipal infrastructure and this would be in their potential wheelhouse to do," Bischoping said.