Tag Archive for: shut

India Shut Down Mobile Internet in Punjab Amid Manhunt for Amritpal Singh

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A US House of Representatives hearing this week about the social media app TikTok did little to clarify lawmaker’s specific concerns about the potential national security risks associated with the wildly popular app, but it did vividly underscore the country’s lack of federal data privacy legislation. WIRED also discovered that TikTok paid for influencers popular on its platform to attend a DC rally in support of the service ahead of the hearing. 

Meanwhile, as a possible indictment of former US president Donald Trump looms in New York state, internet users began generating AI images of Trump being arrested, but there are ways to tell that they’re fake. WIRED examined the increasingly aggressive and desperate tactics of Iran’s government-backed hackers amid mass protest and unrest in the country. Citizen sleuths around the world are using open source intelligence to separate fact from fiction in the mystery of who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline. And vulnerabilities keep showing up in ultra-popular photo cropping tools, exposing a host of cropped images all over the world where some or all of the original image can be recovered.

Plus, if you want to know what it’s like to be investigated by the US Secret Service—and how to avoid that particular pleasure—we have a full account.

And there’s more. Each week, we round up the security news we didn’t cover in-depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories, and stay safe out there.

People living in the Indian state of Punjab grappled with an internet shutdown for days after police imposed a connectivity blackout while searching for the Sikh activist Amritpal Singh. Singh is a member of the Sikh Waris Punjab De movement and recently evaded arrest. More than 100 of his supporters have been arrested. Punjab’s 27 million inhabitants faced mobile data and SMS blocking as well as traffic filtering on certain websites and services. For example, the government appeared to have blocked access to prominent Sikh Twitter accounts, including that of poet Rupi Kaur and the nonprofit United Sikhs. “Punjab Police India continued its crackdown on Waris Punjab De elements wanted on criminal charges,” the government of Punjab…

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Universities across Louisiana shut down due to internet system issues

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NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — Five colleges and universities across Louisiana shut down internet systems after detecting a possible hack.

The five schools are the University of New Orleans, Nunez community college, LSU Agricultural Center, Southern University at Shreveport, and River Parishes Community College Gonzales.

Around 7:00 p.m. Friday (March 24th), students, faculty, staff, and alumni of the UNO began experiencing issues regarding connectivity issues.

The University took to Twitter to address the system issue.

At this time the system issue is being investigated by the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, as well as the Louisiana State Police.

Each college’s internet system can go back online after they are determined to be secure.

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Threat posed by mainland hacker forced GMH to shut down network | News

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A hacker somewhere in the U.S. mainland got past the protective firewalls of Guam Memorial Hospital’s network and started exploring, which put all of the hospital’s interconnected computer systems at risk of cyberattack, according to the hospital’s legal counsel, who said the hospital provided information to federal investigators and is scheduled to meet with the FBI Wednesday.

The hospital, whose IT staff found evidence of an unauthorized network user on the evening of March 2, shut down all of its nearly 100 computerized systems — from phones to email — at 8 a.m. March 4 in order to increase security measures and prevent any damage or theft of information.

Hospital staff found evidence the unauthorized user had accessed the system “multiple times in the past.”

According to the hospital, there is no evidence that patient information, financial information or employee records were accessed, manipulated or destroyed.

There also were no demands for payment in connection with the incident, according to the hospital.

No disciplinary action was taken against any hospital employee in connection with the incident, according to GMH legal counsel.

The systems shutdown also affected the hospital’s satellite operations, at the skilled nursing facility in Barrigada Heights and at the prison clinic in Mangilao.

Hospital visitation was severely restricted for several days in order to allow employees to focus on restoring systems.

The hospital started operating manually during the shutdown, keeping records on paper, and as of Tuesday had restored about 75 percent of its computer systems. Some phone lines and email addresses, for non-critical employees and departments, still were not working as of Tuesday.

“The nature of the (unauthorized) access was identified, and an individual is identified as being the likely actor,” said hospital attorney Jeremiah Luther, who declined to provide further details about the security flaw or how the network was hacked.

Luther said the hospital will not publicly disclose the “likely actor’s” name in the interest of justice.

“We were told by our IT people that the threat to our system, to patient health…

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Despite word of ‘radical malware attack,’ it took hours to shut down Suffolk’s computer network

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The email sent at 11:18 a.m. on Sept. 8 from a top computer manager at the Suffolk County Clerk’s Office to the Bellone administration’s technology commissioner was as blunt as it was chilling.

“We are currently experiencing a radical malware attack and we shut down all outside access to the systems until such time as we are safe,” said the email, which was obtained by Newsday.

Yet, more than four hours had elapsed before the rest of the county’s computer networks, encompassing nearly 600 servers from Hauppauge to Riverhead, were severed from access to the outside world, starting the clock on the county’s broader response to one of the most devastating ransomware attacks faced by a U.S. municipality of any size in the history of such cyberattacks.

A series of emails obtained by Newsday from the day of the attack and the day prior show that awareness of the attack had been slowly dawning on technology staff and officials in the 24 hours preceding the shutdown. Among those was the actual ransomware message, first circulated at 10:53 a.m. on Sept. 8, 25 minutes before the clerk’s office shut down.

WHAT TO KNOW

  • More than four hours passed between the time Suffolk County was warned of a “radical malware attack” and most of the county’s computer networks were shut down.
  • Emails obtained by Newsday show that awareness of the attack had been slowly dawning on technology staff and officials in the 24 hours preceding the shutdown.
  • The cyberattack on Suffolk could be one of the most expensive attacks in U.S. history on municipal governments.

Whether the four-hour lag in shutting down all county computer networks caused a sizable loss of data is open for debate. One tech expert called it “significant,” but said that considerably more data could have been taken in the days and weeks before the Black Cat/ALPHV message was first noted in a 10:53 email. Suffolk Comptroller John M. Kennedy Jr. said it likely made the difference between the clerk’s unscathed backup data and the impacts that continue to ripple through Bellone administration operations. 

The emails obtained by Newsday provide a limited look inside the attack at the time it was happening, chiefly…

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