The Los Angeles Superior Court has an enormous data and online system that for years remained too vulnerable to hackers. The court began stepping up its monitoring, defenses and response operations less than two years ago, and it belatedly brought on a cybersecurity officer – a standard move for any large organization, public or private – this year.
Six weeks later, the court was hit by a ransomware attack that infected its computer system with damaging software, forcing it to temporarily close. The new security systems spotted the breach early on Friday, July 19, and court personnel who began their workdays early found ransom notes on their devices before 7 a.m. that day. The court remained unavailable to the public until the following Tuesday, and even then, it operated at severely diminished capacity for several more days.
Read more…
Source: Governing
Related:
- China issues report on U.S. CIA’s cyberattacks on other countries
May 4, 2023
China on Thursday released an investigation report revealing an “empire of hackers” of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States, one of the major intelligence agencies of the country’s federal government. Over a long period, the CIA has been secretly orchestrating “peaceful evolution” and “color revolutions” around the world, continuously conducting espionage activities, said ...
- Ransomware attack hampering Dallas police operations
May 3, 2023
A major component of the City of Dallas’ police communications system went down Monday morning, as well as some other city services. CBS News Texas’ J.D. Miles has multiple sources confirming the outage was caused by a ransomware attack against the city’s systems. The outage is impacting DPD’s computer assisted dispatch system, called CAD, which directs police ...
- Cyber Attacks Hit in Massachusetts and South Carolina
May 1, 2023
Lowell, which is Massachusetts’ fourth largest city, discovered a cyber intrusion early last week, and its response saw many city systems taken offline. Meanwhile, Spartanburg County, S.C., was struck by ransomware, too. Spartanburg County, S.C., — a community of roughly 327,000 residents — suffered a ransomware attack last week, according to The Record. Essential services like ...
- U.S. deploys more cyber forces abroad to help fight hackers
April 25, 2023
The United States is sending more of its cyber forces abroad to help foreign governments fight hackers, a top U.S. military official said at the RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco. In the last three years, the U.S. military’s Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF) has conducted 47 such “hunt forward” defensive operations across 20 countries at ...
- X_Trader Supply Chain Attack Affects Critical Infrastructure Organizations in U.S. and Europe
April 21, 2023
The X_Trader software supply chain attack affected more organizations than 3CX. Initial investigation by Symantec’s Threat Hunter Team has, to date, found that among the victims are two critical infrastructure organizations in the energy sector, one in the U.S. and the other in Europe. In addition to this, two other organizations involved in financial trading ...
- Ransomware Attack Hits Marinette Marine Shipyard, Results in Short-Term Delay of Frigate, Freedom LCS Construction
April 20, 2023
The Wisconsin shipyard that builds the U.S. Navy’s Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ship and the Constellation-class guided-missile frigate suffered a ransomware attack last week that delayed production across the shipyard, USNI News has learned. Fincantieri Marinette Marine experienced the attack in the early morning hours of April 12, when large chunks of data on the shipyard’s network ...