Tag Archive for: county

County Identifies Gang That Has Taken Down CAD System

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The 9-1-1 center.
Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com

Bucks County officials have identified the ransomware gang behind the attack that has crippled the countywide computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system.

In a statement, county officials said they have informed “local, state and federal partners that the ransomware ‘Akira’ is involved so that they can have situational awareness and review their own systems. ”

Akira, according to various news reports from around the globe, is a cyberattack gang that has hit governments and businesses. The gang can charge millions to release captured data.

The county said in a weekend statement that it “continues to investigate the cybersecurity incident.”

Sources have said federal law enforcement has been investigating the attack. The FBI and Bucks County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment.

“The county continues to work closely with third-party experts to conduct a thorough investigation,” Bucks County officials said in a statement.

Officials have not commented on how much the ransom request was, whether the county is talking with the attackers, if the county has considered paying the ransom, or what will happen to the captured information, which includes sensitive data handled by emergency crews.

While the 9-1-1 system remains operational, the CAD system used by local law enforcement, firefighters, and ambulance squads continued to be out of service as of Saturday afternoon.

The cyberattack kicked off with the outage that started last Sunday.

The outage has led to responders across Bucks County going back to pen and paper and other inconveniences. Call-takers and dispatchers have been using pen and paper and spreadsheets to handle calls.

There have been some frustrations and slowdowns in responses with the CAD system being down, police and fire officials have said.

The Pennsylvania National Guard has been among the state and federal agencies assisting the county.

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Kershaw County School Hit By Black Suit Ransomware

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The Kershaw County School District, a prominent educational institution in the USA, has allegedly fallen victim to a cyberattack by the notorious Black Suit ransomware group.

The cybercriminals claim to successfully infiltrated the school’s systems, leading to the unauthorized extraction and subsequent leak of a staggering 17.5 GB of sensitive data.

Magnitude of Cyberattack on Kershaw County School

The Kershaw County School District, accommodating more than 10,500 students and boasting a staff of over 1,000 employees, has become the latest target in a string of cyberattacks plaguing the US education sector.

The Cyber Express team reached out to school authorities for confirmation of the cyberattack. However, at the time of reporting, no official response has been received, casting uncertainty over the legitimacy of the cyberattack on Kershaw County School claims.

Interestingly, the school’s official website remains operational and unaffected, raising questions about the credibility of the Kershaw County School cyberattack assertions.

Kershaw County School cyberattack
Source: HackManac

This cyberattack on Kershaw County School marks a recurring trend in the education sector, particularly K-12 institutions, which have increasingly become prime targets for cybercriminals.

Why Educational Institutions Are Targets

A research report from the Center for Internet Security highlights the vulnerability of public schools in the US to such malicious activities. This revelation follows the closure of two US schools due to recent cyberattacks, further highlighting the severity of the situation.

The Jackson County Intermediate School District (ISD) faced a disruptive ‘system outage,’ prompting the closure of several public schools reliant on its technology services. The outage impacted critical systems, including telephones, classroom technology, and heating facilities.

As investigations into the incident continue, Superintendent Kevin Oxley declared a day’s leave for affected schools in Jackson and Hillsdale counties, aiming to facilitate the thorough detection and resolution of the issue.

In a separate incident, Stanford University, a prestigious research institution, grappled with a cybersecurity breach in…

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Ransomware attack leads to cyber incident in Clay County

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(Moorhead, Minn.) — Clay County officials say they discovered a cyber incident involving personal information relating to individuals the county serves.

According to a letter sent to Clay County residents, the county says they “are not aware of any misuse of any information involved in this incident.” Beginning on December 22, 2023, Clay County mailed notifications to individuals whose protected health information and/or personal information was impacted by this incident.

On October 27, 2023, Clay County determined that its network had been impacted by a ransomware attack that affected the electronic document management system (“CaseWorks”), which is hosted by Clay County and used by other Minnesota County social services entities. Clay County immediately initiated its incident response process and began working with its local information technology partner to investigate, to securely restore operations, and determine the effects of the incident. Clay County also worked with a nationally recognized digital forensics firm to assist with the investigation and notified federal law enforcement and the Minnesota Department of Human Services.

Through the investigation, Clay County determined that there was unauthorized access to its network between October 23, 2023 and October 26, 2023, and that the cyber criminals responsible for this attack took some data from Clay County’s network. As soon as Clay County learned this, it started notifying the other impacted counties and began an extensive review to determine what information may have been involved and who may have been affected, so that we could provide notice.

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Washington County systems hit with cyberattack

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It was a dictionary attack, which is a tactic used to break into password-protected computers, etc. by literally trying every word in the dictionary.

WASHINGTON COUNTY, ARKANSAS, Ark — The Washington County government said a cyberattack was unsuccessful after the county’s computer services were hit with 60,000 hack attempts between Friday, Dec. 15 and Sunday.

According to Washington County Director of Communications Tad Sours, an attempt to hack the county computer systems began on Friday with 14,000 attempts, 17,000 attempts on Saturday, and then another 33,000 on Sunday. Sours said the attempts were “not successful at all” with “no service failures.”

“They attack thousands of municipalities, businesses, and government agencies all the time, looking for [something] they haven’t found here,” said Sours. 

The number of attempts on Monday hasn’t been calculated yet, but Sours said it appears the attempts have scaled back.

Sours described the attempts as a dictionary attack, which is a tactic used by hackers trying to break into password-protected computers, networks, or other IT resources by literally trying every word in the dictionary as a possible password. 

“They’re trying to log in to random emails to see if they can break through our security,” said Sours. “They’re trying to get into our system to send things out using a ‘.gov’ email address so that more people would fall for a scam.” 

Tom Kirkham, CEO and founder of Kirkham IronTech which is a cybersecurity specialist company said this is a large issue. 

“It happens thousands of times a second to every device that’s connected to a network,” said Kirkham. 

Kirkham said it’s important to be aware during the holidays and weekends.

“There are a lot of people off work—like cybersecurity people, or IT…

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