Tag Archive for: NYC
Cyber incident at NYC law department is not ransomware, officials say
Written by Benjamin Freed
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city officials said Tuesday that a cybersecurity incident at the city’s legal bureau is not a ransomware attack, but that an investigation is ongoing.
The New York City Law Department, the 1,000-lawyer agency that represents local officials and agencies in court, reported Monday having “connectivity” problems, including loss of access to its email services, after it had to shut down its internal networks on Sunday.
“The Law Department has been experiencing a connectivity issue since yesterday, and, as a result, no one is currently able to log on to the Law Department’s computer system,” a city attorney wrote to a federal judge, according to the New York Daily News, which first reported the incident.
While the incident comes amid heightened attention toward ransomware — with the Justice Department last week making it a top priority — and just a few weeks after Washington, D.C., saw its police department suffer a leak of 250 gigabytes of sensitive files, de Blasio and others said ransomware is not at play here.
“To this hour we have not seen information compromised or a ransom demand,” de Blasio said at a City Hall press briefing, though he acknowledged the situation is “evolving.” “We’re in a state of high alert. We built up our Cyber Command years ago in anticipation of this environment.”
De Blasio made similar comments in a TV interview Monday night.
Geoff Brown, the city’s chief information security officer and head of New York City Cyber Command, reiterated de Blasio’s statement.
“Contrary to some of the reporting, this is not a ransomware situation,” he said, adding that the “Law Department IT environment will be securely re-established promptly.”
The FBI is investigating the incident, alongside New York Police Department detectives, NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller said at the press conference. He said investigators have already identified the malware responsible and are moving onto the forensic stage.
“What we’re seeing in this case is the good news, the system…
DataDownload: Remembering Dan Kaminsky, the digital Paul Revere | by NYC Media Lab | May, 2021
DataDownload: Remembering Dan Kaminsky, the digital Paul Revere A weekly summary of all things Media, Data, Emerging Tech View this email in your browser
Daniel Kaminsky died this week. He was an internet innovator, and he was 42. What isn’t as widely known is that he died from diabetes. It was, as we now so often hear, a ‘preexisting condition.’ That phrase was used to explain early deaths from COVID-19, and to battle get American’s decent health care coverage. But the simple fact is, most everyone you know has something. It’s time to acknowledge that improving heath care is a national priority for everyone.
Then we have good news — lots of it in fact. A great piece on the innovations at Spotify. The growth of Crypto among migrant workers. Congress getting schooled on algorithmic misinformation. And some surprising data in who’s reading news platforms (hint, Google isn’t at the top of the list).
This week, don’t miss our Podcast recommendation — This American Life’s episode called: The Herd. It’s a brilliant, chilling look at vaccine hesitancy — and how hard it is to combat it.
And, the big news is our amazing panel on NFTs and the future of Art and Artists. It’s a can’t miss event. And we’re co-sponsoring the WSJ Future of Everything Festival. We have tix, so grab ’em fast.
That’s this week. It’s May — already. So buckle up for a busy spring and summer.
Steve
Steven Rosenbaum
[email protected]
Executive Director
The NYC Media Lab Must-Read Daniel Kaminsky, Internet Security Savior, Dies at 42
It’s sad that the unsung heroes of the internet are really only sung about when they’ve passed on. Daniel Kaminsky, who had taught himself how to code by the age of 5 and got through the Pentagon’s defenses by 11, recently died at the age of 42. In 2008, Kaminsky alerted the Department of Homeland Security, executives at Microsoft and Cisco, and other internet security experts about a fundamental flaw of the internet. He discovered that the Domain Name System, or DNS, protocol had a flaw that would allow hackers to manipulate traffic so that “a person typing the website for a bank would instead be redirected to an impostor site that could steal…
Cyberattack cripples NYC DOE’s teacher disciplinary system
A ransomware attack has crippled the city’s teacher discipline system, The Post has learned.
A contractor that provides hearing transcripts for the city Department of Education, the Ubiqus Group, said it “was hit by a ransomware-type cybersecurity incident” on Dec. 4.
“As a precautionary measure, we have shut down all our IT systems across all our operating sites,” the company announced on its website.
In a ransomware attack, hackers seize a user’s data, folders or device until a “ransom” fee is paid. A DOE spokeswoman would not say whether a ransom had been demanded.
Pending a probe, the cyberattack shut down NYC termination hearings for tenured educators accused of incompetence or misconduct.
“This is serious. Transcripts are the lifeblood of these hearings,” said Betsy Combier, a paralegal who defends teachers and a blogger who first reported the malware attack. “You can’t do anything without the transcripts, you can’t do a closing. You can’t decide a case.”
Combier said she called the state Education Department and was told that a “forensic cyberteam” is investigating.
The city DOE said Ubiqus is contracted by the state. A spokeswoman could not immediately say how many hearings have been held up.