National Security Expert Tells Fox Trump’s Water Hacking Take ‘Harder to Understand’

President Donald Trump’s claim the state of Minnesota—and not Iran—could be responsible for a cyberattack on its water systems is “harder to understand,” national security expert Jamil Jaffer said Friday while speaking to Fox congressional correspondent Bill Melugin.

“We know this is an area of interest for them, so it very well could be Iran, it also could very well be somebody posing as Iran,” Jaffer said.

“The president is right to say that we are not sure who it is. Blaming it on Minnesota, a little harder to understand, because it’s 30 different water systems, small localities across the state, so it’s hard to imagine it as actually a state of Minnesota,” he said.

“But there’s definitely a possibility it’s not Iran but some other actor. We just don’t know for sure who is involved in this effort,” he added.

Melugin mentioned the FBI had issued a warning about similar attacks, prompting Jaffer to confirm that the attack “is something we have seen before.”

“We have seen multiple stagings, a set of attacks. So this could suggest, the fact it has been multiple states, it could suggest a nation-state actor, and it may very well be Iran. This is sort of in their M.O.”

He continued:

The best countries, when it comes to cyberattacks, are the United States ourselves, obviously, the Russians, the Chinese, but Iran and North Korea are the next tier up. They’re very capable. They have the ability to access critical infrastructure systems.

They have long been seeking access … what we haven’t seen in Minnesota is destructive activity. We haven’t seen systems go offline, utilities switched to backup.

It will be interesting to see where these other states are seeing and whether they suspect it is the Iranians, as well, and then the question will be is it a false flag, is it somebody trying to blame the Iranians? But I think the hard part about this is it’s hard to blame the state of Minnesota when you are seeing six other states having this stuff, as well.

More than 30 communities in Minnesota had their water systems attacked, officials said this week.

The Minnesota Department of Health said similar attacks have become more common.

“Cyberattacks have become more common and public water supplies (PWSs) that utilize operational technology are required to assess their cyber security at least yearly,” a statement shared via the organization’s website reads. “Attacks by foreign cyber hackers have occurred and homegrown terrorists and ordinary vandals are a threat to the safety of drinking water.”

Watch the above via Fox News.

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