Tag Archive for: temporarily

Huber Heights services temporarily restored, FBI investigating ransomware attack

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In Huber Heights, most of the city’s services are running on temporary platforms and independent of one another. IT techs are still working to get tax and utility billing online.

Residents can pay city bills online or pay them in person. All late fees are suspended through the end of this month.

On Sunday, November 12, 2023, the city decalred a ‘state of emergency’ after an IT tech alerted city leaders about a ransomware attack. It shut down Huber Heights’ city network.

City Manager Richard Dzik confirmed that it was an intentional attack. However, authorities are still uncertain if any residents’ personal data was stolen. The FBI is investigating the incident.

A year ago, Dzik, helped another city navigate a cyber attack when he served as the safety service director for Mount Vernon.

“It was a third party vendor. They have this tool where they can log into your computer, look at your screen and fix things,” Dzik explained. “The hackers accessed that tool and used it to put the ransomware on.  It took about a month to get back to normal and two months to figure out what happened.”

This week, IT techs will install the latest anti-virus software on the servers. Then they’ll wipe clean all city computers and devices to bring Huber Heights’ network back online.

Meanwhile, city employees are keeping things running on new laptops with Verizon cellular hotspots.

“It’s not the way we prefer to do [business]. In two weeks we should be back on our normal operational schedule.” Dzik also says neighboring cities are offering their IT staff to help.

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Discord.io Temporarily Shuts Down After Hack, Promises Security Overhaul

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A third-party service that let thousands of users create custom invites for Discord is temporarily shutting down following a hack.

Discord.io on Tuesday confirmed it suffered a “major data breach,” which resulted in a hacker downloading its entire database. “We were made aware of the breach later on in the day, and after confirming the content of the breach, we decided to shut down all services and operations,” Discord.io said in an announcement. 

The hacker, who goes by the name “Akhirah,” claims to have stolen data on 760,000 Discord.io users. Akhirah says the hack was motivated in part by the fact that Discord.io allegedly links to child sexual abuse material. The hacker tells Bleeping Computer they would be open to keeping the stolen information private if Discord.io deletes those links, but the stolen data is also currently available for sale on a hacking forum.

Discord.io says it’s “still investigating the breach, but we believe that the breach was caused by a vulnerability in our website’s code, which allowed an attacker to gain access to our database.”

The good news is that affected users don’t need to change their passwords on Discord itself because Discord.io was only storing Discord user IDs, not any Discord authentication tokens. 

Still, the hacker stole email addresses associated with Discord.io users, along with the billing addresses of those who made purchases on the service before it started using the Stripe and PayPal payments platform. 

In addition, a small number of users who signed up with Discord.io prior to 2018 had their password information stolen. However, the stolen password data was salted and hashed. “While your password was encrypted to industry standards, if it was not unique, we urge you to update any other site that might have used this password,” Discord.io adds.  

Although Discord.io has temporarily shut down, the service plans on returning with stronger security in place. “This will include a complete rewrite of our website’s code, as well as a complete overhaul of our security practices,” it says. 

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FirstEnergy temporarily disables millions of accounts after hack

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Usernames and passwords obtained from “stuffing” were used to try to break into FirstEnergy accounts. The company is urging customers to change their passwords.

AKRON, Ohio — If you’re a FirstEnergy customer, you may have received a notice to change your password, or worse – your account may have been disabled altogether. 

Upwards of six million customers have been affected by unauthorized logins to their account. 

The problem is repeated hacking attempts found during a routine security check of accounts by FirstEnergy.

RELATED: Here’s why FirstEnergy is making you change your account password

“People were trying to log in and were unable to. They saw a number of those,” says Alex Hamerstone of Strongsville security consulting company TrustedSec. 

FirstEnergy serves millions of customers in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions, from Ohio up to New Jersey. And many customers found they were locked out of their online accounts this weekend.

“If you go on the internet, there are oftentimes lists of usernames and passwords that have been taken off other breaches or other situations, and what it looks like is someone was trying all of those usernames and password combinations on the FirstEnergy site,” says Hamerstone.

While nearly all of the hacking attempts were unsuccessful, some of them worked. The sneaky practice is called “stuffing.” Someone can easily get your username and password from one source, and then try to plug them into other accounts, like your bank or credit card, to see if they work.

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Building permits temporarily unavailable due to ransomware attack |

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City officials said it could be several weeks before weekly building permits will be available.

The Tulsa World will resume publishing city building permits on Sundays for new commercial construction, expansions and enlargements of more than $50,000 when they become available.

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