The dam is reportedly not very large, measuring some 20-feet-tall, and no damage was done by the hackers.
"It's very, very small," Rye City Manager Marcus Serrano told WSJ.
Access was reportedly gained through a cellular modem as hackers, connected to the Iranian government, also attacked US bank websites in retaliation for American spies damaging an Iranian nuclear facility in 2010 with the Stuxnet computer worm.
Currently, there are over 57,000 industrial control systems connected to the internet, and the hack of the dam control systems raised many concerns about old computers and unsecure systems controlling important systems.
“Hackers could get at the power plants and other parts of national infrastructure because many of the systems were set up long before the need to protect them against remote attacks became apparent,” the BBC noted.
