EP. 148: AI-Generated Attack Code Is Now Targeting the Systems That Control Critical Infrastructure

The Digital Warfare Podcast · Aug 21, 2026 · 4m · transcript

Summary

U.S. cybersecurity and national-security agencies have warned of an active threat targeting Siemens S7 Series PLCs in critical infrastructure. The activity affects sectors including critical manufacturing, energy, water and wastewater, chemicals, food and agriculture, and commercial facilities.

Threat actors are using internet scanning to identify exposed or poorly protected controllers, exploiting weak credentials and outdated configurations, and rapidly developing attack tooling with AI assistance. Observed Python scripts incorporate the legitimate snap7.dll/python-snap7 library to…