Organizations in the water and wastewater, energy, dam, and food and agriculture sectors across North America and Europe have been warned by U.S. and international agencies regarding ongoing attacks being launched by pro-Russia hacktivist operations against their operational technology devices and industrial control systems, CyberScoop reports.

While most of the hacktivist intrusions against critical infrastructure systems were aimed at causing nuisance to the impacted facilities, attackers can also cause more significant disruptions, according to a joint advisory from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, National Security Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration, Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, and the FBI, as well as the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security and UK’s National Cyber Security Centre. Organizations have been urged to promptly implement more robust OT device passwords and multi-factor authentication while restricting internet exposure of OT systems.

Moreover, CISA Executive Assistant Director of Cybersecurity Eric Goldstein called on tech vendors supporting critical infrastructure entities’ OT systems to adopt stronger security controls.