One unfortunate holiday tradition seems to be that ransomware groups will attack at holiday times when entities are less likely to have full IT support from staff. One attack, however, reportedly started last week. Ed Blazina reports:
What Pittsburgh Regional Transit last week thought was a computer glitch that affected rail service has turned out to be a ransomware attack on the transit service.
The agency announced Monday that it launched an investigation as soon as it discovered the attack and “activated its Cyber Incident Response Team, notified law enforcement, and engaged nationally recognized third-party cybersecurity and data forensics experts,” it said in a news release.
In an interview, spokesman Adam Brandolph said the agency is limited in what it can say about the incident due to the ongoing investigation, but at this point the agency doesn’t believe personal rider information has been compromised.
“We don’t know if any information has been compromised,” Brandolph said. “That is still under investigation.”
Read more at Pittsburgh Union Progress.