A May 1 announcement by PENNCREST School District in Pennsylvania begins: Over the weekend, the PENNCREST School District became aware of a situation, believed to be a ransomware event, which has disrupted certain aspects of our operations. We quickly took steps to implement our Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan. Following our plan, we shut down and…
Author: Dissent
Montana State University update on “cyberattack” doesn’t disclose it’s ransomware
Montana State University was hit with a cyberattack on April 20. They are still working to recover from it. Here is their latest update: Campus network update: NetID password changes, service status page Sent at 8:18 a.m. Friday, April 28, via email to students, faculty and staff. As work continues to return Montana State University’s…
The Untold Story of the Boldest Supply-Chain Hack Ever
Kim Zetter has a fascinating piece on the run-up to the SolarWinds attack. Here’s a snippet: In fact, the Justice Department and Volexity had stumbled onto one of the most sophisticated cyberespionage campaigns of the decade. The perpetrators had indeed hacked SolarWinds’ software. Using techniques that investigators had never seen before, the hackers gained access…
Suffolk, without a cyberattack recovery plan, hires chief to create one
Vera Chinese reports: Suffolk County’s new chief security information officer, announced Monday by County Executive Steve Bellone, will be charged with creating a recovery plan for potential cyberattacks in the future, administration officials said. The lack of a stand-alone recovery plan before a breach was discovered Sept. 8 likely contributed to the amount of time it has taken…
IT giant Bitmarck shuts down customer, internal systems after cyberattack
Jessica Lyons Hardcastle reports: German IT services provider Bitmarck has shut down all of its customer and internal systems, including entire datacenters in some cases, following a cyberattack. The company, one of the largest service providers for German health insurers, said no customer, patient, or insured individuals’ data had been accessed in the security breach…
T-Mobile discloses second data breach since the start of 2023
Sergiu Gatlan reports: T-Mobile disclosed the second data breach of 2023 after discovering that attackers had access to the personal information of hundreds of customers for more than a month, starting late February 2023. Compared to previous data breaches reported by T-Mobile, the latest of which impacted 37 million people, this incident affected only 836 customers….