Digital Floodgates: Lessons from the Bowman Dam Hack
Preface: Modern dam control systems are using IoT technologies like smart sensors, PLCs, remote access gateways and cloud-based dashboards to improve operational efficiency and real time monitoring. But this connectivity makes them vulnerable to serious cybersecurity threats and turns critical infrastructure into targets of modern warfare. Threat actors can exploit weaknesses like weak authentication, unpatched firmware or unsecured communication protocols to gain access, manipulate dam operations, disable alarms or launch coordinated cyber physical attacks. These IoT based intrusions can cause catastrophic flooding, disrupt emergency response or be synchronized with kinetic strikes in hybrid warfare scenarios. So protecting such systems requires a multi layered security approach that includes network segmentation, zero trust architecture, encrypted communication, firmware validation and continuous monitoring with AI driven anomaly detection. Case-study: The Bowman Avenue Dam u...
