The Financial Times published a report Monday saying that hundreds of people would have been at risk of getting sick after Iran's cyberattack against Israel’s water systems in April.
The British newspaper quoted a Western intelligence official as saying that Iran tried to increase chlorine levels in the water flowing to residential areas and that the attack was close to being successful.
“It was more sophisticated than they [Israel] initially thought,” the Western official said. “It was close to successful, and it’s not fully clear why it didn’t succeed.”
An unnamed Israeli official told the Financial Times that the attack created “an unpredictable risk scenario” by starting a tit-for-tat wave of attacks on civilian infrastructure, something both countries had so far avoided.
An Iranian regime insider dismissed the allegations to the newspaper, saying that "Iran cannot politically afford to try to poison Israeli civilians."
The head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, Yigal Unna, hinted last week that the attack may have aimed to mix chlorine or other chemicals into the water supply.
Unna did not mention Iran directly, nor did he comment on the alleged Israeli retaliation two weeks later, but he said recent developments have ushered in a new era of covert warfare.
