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:
- Mandatory cyber requirements after Change Healthcare attack opposed by health sector
March 18, 2024
The American Hospital Association has opposed mandatory cybersecurity requirements proposed for the healthcare sector following the ransomware attack against Change Healthcare, which has resulted in widespread prescription processing outages across the U.S. “Imposing fines or cutting Medicare payments would diminish hospital resources needed to combat cybercrime and would be counterproductive to our shared goal of preventing ...
- Ransomware’s appetite for US healthcare sees known attacks double in a year
March 15, 2024
Following the February 21 attack on Change Healthcare, scores of people in the US have been living with the brutal, real-world effects of ransomware. Described by the American Hospital Association (AHA) President and CEO Rick Pollack as “the most significant and consequential incident of its kind against the US health care system in history,” the attack ...
- CIA allegedly made fake social media accounts to troll the Chinese government
March 14, 2024
The CIA allegedly launched a secret operation to troll Chinese officials and turn public opinion against them through leaked intelligence and negative news on social media. Reuters reports the operation began in 2019 and was also aimed at causing paranoia within Xi Jinping’s government. CIA agents reportedly made fake social media accounts to spread rumors, such ...
- US health department opens probe into UnitedHealth hack
March 13, 2024
The U.S. government on Wednesday said it has opened an investigation into the cyberattack at UnitedHealth Group’s Change Healthcare to find out whether there was a breach of protected health data and if the company followed U.S. health privacy law. It is the first announcement of a probe by the Department Of Health and Human Services ...
- Russia’s spy service accuses US of trying to meddle in presidential election
March 11, 2024
President Vladimir Putin’s foreign intelligence service on Monday accused the United States of trying to meddle in Russia’s presidential election and said that Washington even had plans to launch a cyber attack on the online voting system. Putin, who is almost certain to win the March 15-17 presidential election, has warned the West that any attempts ...
- CISA confirms it was breached by attackers using Ivanti flaws
March 11, 2024
One of the organizations compromised through a recently-discovered flaw in Ivanti products was, ironically enough, the US government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Confirmation of the breach came from CISA itself, as well as from an anonymous source “with knowledge of the situation”, with a CISA spokesperson telling The Record the organization “identified activity indicating ...