Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Last month we talked briefly about how and why cyberattackers are targeting municipal water utilities throughout the United States. Today we’re taking a closer look at that story—why we’re so vulnerable to these attacks but also how volunteer hackers are working to protect our access to clean, safe water. Our guest today is Eric Geller, a senior reporter at Cybersecurity Dive, who focuses on federal cybersecurity policy and critical infrastructure protection. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Feltman: Thanks so much for coming on to chat with us today. Eric Geller: Thanks for having me. Feltman: So I wanna start with a very basic question. When we talk about cyberattacks, what is it we’re actually talking about? What’s under that umbrella? Geller: Well, it’s a wide range of things. It can be everything from guessing somebody’s password or tricking them into handing it over and then just logging in like a real authorized user and messing with the computer system. Or it can be essentially fooling the computer system itself, taking advantage of a vulnerability in the software to get access to something that you shouldn’t be able to access. And then you can, sort of, layer on top of that the supply chain aspect, which is: all these companies are interrelated. So if you can get into one company, you might be able to then jump from there into another company’s systems, either by, again, pretending to be an employee of that first company or by taking advantage of actual connections between the computer systems and