Kate Cough reports: The Department of Environmental Protection has warned municipalities and water-sector professionals to be on alert after two recent ransomware intrusions, believed to be the first on wastewater systems in Maine. The attacks occurred in Limestone and Mount Desert Island, said Judy Bruenjes, a wastewater technical assistance engineer for the DEP. Read more…
Category: Government Sector
Case Files Affected in Dallas Police Department Data Loss
Claire Cardona reports: Multiple terabytes of Dallas Police Department data are missing and may be unrecoverable after being deleted during a data migration process in April, according to the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office. District Attorney John Creuzot said in a disclosure notice to defense attorneys Wednesday that the city had learned in April that…
Current and former North Carolina state employees notified of unintended exposure of file on intranet
From the no-need-to-hack-when-it’s-leaking dept., state edition, the North Carolina Department of Information Technology and Office of State Human Resources are notifying 84,860 current or former state agency employees that a file with their name and SSN was uploaded by mistake to a state intranet site accessed by more than 65,000 authenticated users: We are writing…
NZ: Work and Income privacy breach due to email mistake
Daniel Smith reports: Private email addresses of 103 beneficiaries have been made public due to a mistake by a Work and Income caseworker. They were carbon copied (CC) into an email promoting free fruit and nuts from the Christchurch City Council, rather than blind carbon copied (BCC), which would have concealed them from each other. Read more…
Illinois’ FOID Card System Hit By Cyber Attack
WROK1440 reports: Some parts of Illinois state government have really been taking it on the chin from the bad guys in cyberspace. On the heels of cyber attacks on the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and the Illinois Department of Employment Security, comes word of trouble for the Illinois State Police (ISP). So What Happened? Last Thursday, the…
Ransomware Shuts Down Online Services in Joplin, Mo.
Debby Woodin reports: A July 7 network security incident that caused the Joplin city government’s computer system to shut down is believed to be the result of ransomware, the city said Thursday in a statement amid an ongoing investigation. An insurer has paid an unknown person $320,000 to keep any sensitive information obtained as a…