Pixley Irrigation District ‘hacking’ incident still under investigation
Investigators are still trying to determine who hacked into the controls for Pixley Irrigation District’s main turnout off of Deer Creek last month. A gate got stuck in “manual” mode when it should have operated remotely in automatic mode. Pixley’s water resources superintendent Kirk Masters called the incident a “hiccup” that was discovered on June 22, the first day of the district’s summer water run. Masters reported it at Pixley’s July 9 board meeting and said the problem was rectified within two hours. Masters said in his report that he was told it was Iranian hackers, but that has not been confirmed. … This incident comes on the heels of an Iranian hacker group attempting to gain access to California Water Service’s operational systems in Bakersfield, Visalia and Chico.
