Tag Archive for: Posts

City of Oakland posts statement on ransomware attack, as hackers begin posting data online

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City of Oakland says cyber-thieves releasing some city workers’ personal information

The City of Oakland on Monday acknowledged cyber-thieves have started releasing personal information of some city workers as part of an ongoing ransomware attack. Social Security numbers, drivers licenses and other information are all part of the data that has been stolen.

OAKLAND, Calif. – The City of Oakland Monday acknowledged that its servers have been hijacked by a hacker group called Play, in a cyberattack that has crippled the city’s systems and compromised private data.

The mayor declined to talk about the issue and the City Administrator’s office was dark Monday afternoon.

Instead, a message was posted on the city’s website acknowledging the ransomware attack and warning about a network outage. 

“Moving forward we will focus on strengthening the security of our information technology systems,” said Mayor Sheng Thao in the statement on the website.

The hacker group ramped up the stakes over the weekend. Online, the group posted a statement declaring they have access to personal confidential data, financial information, IDs, passports, employee information, and human rights violation information.

The website indicated the page had more than 1,130 views.

The hacker group posted a link with a password for people to download part of the stolen data and issued a threat saying, “If there (sic) no reaction full dump will be uploaded.”
Cooper Quintin, a Senior Staff Technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the hacker group Play is not well-known, but has been flagged in the past by some cybersecurity websites that share bits of codes from various hacker groups in order help tech experts fight off attacks and improve security.

“It looks like they have ties to some pretty established ransomware groups like Conti, which was a big one as recently as last year,” said Quintin.

Quintin was able to access parts of Play’s hacker code from an online cybersecurity page.

“So this is a bespoke piece of software they’ve developed in house that they can, you know, on any computer system that they get a foothold on, they can deploy it and just instantly encrypt all the files and then send a…

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Houston unknowingly hosted mail-order bride, casino posts on city website

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The page on Wednesday morning featured a spate of blog entries on a variety of confounding topics that were decidedly unrelated to City Hall. They were taken down by the afternoon, after the Houston Chronicle inquired about them.

The source of the blog entries, many of which were nonsensical, was unknown Wednesday. Mary Benton, the city’s communications director, said she alerted the information technology department to the posts. The listed author on the articles, a housing department employee named Ashley Lawson, did not actually write and post them, Benton said.

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The entries appeared on the city’s news site, cityofhouston.news, a WordPress blog that does not share a domain with the city’s primary website, houstontx.gov.

Christopher Mitchell, the city’s chief information security officer, said no city information was compromised. 

“We were recently made aware of improper posts appearing on a blog site utilized by the city to allow individual departments to post departmental content,” Mitchell said in a statement. “The blog site is hosted on a third-party platform and is not connected to any City of Houston enterprise systems. At no point did the city experience a compromise of city systems, data, or information. The origin of the posts was from an active account that was no longer in use, and the city is taking all necessary precautions to correct the issue and prevent a recurrence.”

The posts, often in broken or garbled English, had appeared at least 29 times since Sept. 13, displayed as “uncategorized” entries among more routine posts about police and fire investigations and where to get a flu shot.

RELATED NEWS: Once again, Houston is cutting its tax rate — but that doesn’t mean your bill will go down

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Toronto posts new request for private security firm to ‘patrol and monitor’ parks – Toronto

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The City of Toronto is once again petitioning for private security companies to patrol its parks and investigate “possible attempted encampments, safety hazards and criminal activity.”

The new posting comes after an attempt in May to find a company to provide security at municipal parks failed.

The city came under fire from some earlier this year when it put out a request for proposals (RFP) to find private security firms to prevent encampments in parks.

That RFP failed to draw qualified bidders, the city said, with two companies given short-term, non-competitive contracts to provide the service.

Read more:

Toronto looking at hiring private security at major parks to prevent encampments

During the spring, the city awarded two short-term contracts to patrol parks including Trinity Bellwoods Park, Lamport Stadium Park, Alexandra Park and Dufferin Grove.

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“The current parks security contracts with Logix Security Inc. and Valguard Security Inc. for $500,000 each began on April 13, 2022, and are temporary interim contracts to provide parks security until the contract associated with the RFP can be awarded,” a spokesperson for the City of Toronto said.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, large encampments formed across parks in Toronto as homeless people said they felt the shelters weren’t safe and feared contracting the virus.

Lamport Stadium and Trinity Bellwoods were both sites that saw many structures and tents. The City of Toronto was criticized for the tactics police officers used to clear the encampments.

Read more:

Toronto planned encampment clearing operation for months, built profiles of residents

An RFP for security services to patrol city parks closed on May 30, 2022, but none of the bidders met Toronto’s criteria, the city said.

The new RFP, posted on Wednesday, says Toronto is looking to retain a company that will offer security guard services at parks around the city.

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Students in Israel Don’t Carry Guns to Class, Contrary to Social Media Posts

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Quick Take

Israel has established strict measures in response to armed attacks on its schoolchildren. But social media posts falsely claim there have been “no school shootings in Israel” and use a photo to misleadingly suggest students carry weapons to class. Only guards and other specific personnel — not students — can carry arms in Israeli schools. 

Full Story 

A mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24 was the deadliest at a U.S. school in a decade, and has once again sparked debate about gun laws and how to protect children in the classroom.

Legislators, educators and others are proposing a variety of measures to curb the violence, including arming teachers or placing armed guards in schools. 

Comparisons also are being made to gun laws or regulatory measures taken in other countries, such as Israel, a nation that has a low number of school shootings as compared to the U.S. But as we’ve written before, some social media posts have spread misinformation about school security measures and gun control laws in Israel.

On May 29, the Independent Firearm Owners Association — which describes itself as “a gun rights, pro-privacy, pro-freedom organization” — shared a photo on Facebook showing young women walking with military-style guns. The caption reads, “No school shootings in Israel. Must be great gun control? What, they carry guns to class – oh no, not that!” The post received over 13,000 likes and 8,000 shares.

The photo has appeared in similar tweets, also claiming there are “no school shootings in Israel.”

But the Facebook post and the tweets misrepresent the individuals in the photo. And it is not true that there have been no school shootings in Israel.

We don’t know when the photo was taken. But through a reverse image search, we found the photo had been posted in 2011 on Defence.pk — a self-described “one stop resource for Pakistan defence, strategic affairs, security issues, world defence and military affairs” — with the heading, “Pictures of Women in the Armed Forces.” 

We also found the image used in an article from 2020 published by SHTF Blog, a survival blog website, titled “Israeli…

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