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:
- KeyBank: Hackers of third-party provider stole customer data
September 3, 2022
Hackers stole personal data including Social Security numbers, addresses and account numbers of home mortgage holders at KeyBank, the bank reports, in the breach of a third-party vendor that serves multiple corporate clients. The hackers obtained the information on July 5 after breaking into computers at the insurance services provider Overby-Seawell Company, according to a letter ...
- IRS data leak exposes personal info of 120,000 taxpayers
September 3, 2022
The Internal Revenue Service has accidentally leaked confidential information for approximately 120,000 taxpayers who filed a form 990-T as part of their tax returns. IRS Form 990T is used to report ‘unrelated business income’ paid to a tax-exempt entity, such as nonprofits (charities) or IRA and SEP retirement accounts. This income is commonly derived from sales unrelated ...
- US telcos admit to storing, handing over location data
September 2, 2022
US mobile carriers know a lot about where their customers every move, and according to letters sent to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), they routinely store such location data for years, willingly hand it over to law enforcement if served a proper subpoena, and say users can’t opt out. FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a ...
- US govt sues Kochava for selling sensitive geolocation data
August 29, 2022
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced today that it filed a lawsuit against Idaho-based location data broker Kochava for selling sensitive and precise geolocation data (in meters) collected from hundreds of millions of mobile devices. As the consumer protection watchdog said, Kochava’s clients could use this data to identify and keep track of mobile users’ ...
- Nelnet Servicing breach exposes data of 2.5M student loan accounts
August 29, 2022
Data for over 2.5 million individuals with student loans from Oklahoma Student Loan Authority (OSLA) and EdFinancial was exposed after hackers breached the systems of technology services provider Nelnet Servicing. Technology services from Nelnet Servicing, including a web portal, are used by OSLA and EdFinancial to give online access students taking out a loan access to ...
- US ‘actively defending against foreign interference and influence’ in midterms, Cyber Command says
August 25, 2022
US military and intelligence officials are stepping up their efforts to defend the electoral process from foreign hacking and disinformation as the November midterms approach, officials said Thursday. Officials are “actively defending against foreign interference and influence operations in U.S. elections,” US Cyber Command and the National Security Agency said in a statement, “specifically by focusing ...