James Swift reports: On May 6, 2019, the City of Cartersville alerted residents that the local government had fallen prey to a ransomware attack. Yet since then, details on the size, scope and severity of the cybersecurity breach have remained scarce. City officials broke their nearly yearlong silence on the cyberattack, however, in the wake of…
Category: Government Sector
‘Catastrophic data loss’ affects thousands of Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office dashcam videos
Rosana Hughes reports: A “catastrophic data loss” caused thousands of Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office videos from dashboard cameras to disappear — and potentially could jeopardize criminal and civil cases. All dash camera footage for all 130 patrol deputies between Oct. 25, 2018, and Jan. 23 of this year was lost after a software failure on…
PH: ‘Comeleak’ hacker cleared of cybercrime charges in largest hack in Philippine history
Nikka G. Valenzuela reports: A Manila court has dismissed the cybercrime case against an information technology graduate who was charged in connection with the hacking of the Commission of Elections (Comelec) website in 2016—the biggest private data leak in Philippine history. Paul Loui Biteng was cleared of criminal charges after the prosecution failed to prove…
IL: La Salle County: We’re still open for business
News Tribune reports: La Salle County officials Friday morning affirmed workers continue to restore the county’s computer network “with its first priority being public safety” after a ransomware attack this week. “All county offices remain open and are operating in lieu of their limited ability to access certain documents and records,” the statement read. “The…
Hackers shut down Rwandan government data centre
James Barton reports: A Rwandan data centre that hosts servers related to the country’s government has been brought offline by hackers. The centre, which also hosted private sector servers, was left offline for hours by a cyber attack on 18th February which blocked it from receiving traffic. This resulted in the majority of government websites –…
UK: Ransomware attack leaves council facing huge bill to restore services
Helen Pidd and Gregory Robinson report: A council in the north-east of England has admitted that it has suffered a cyber-attack that has disabled its IT servers for the past three weeks, leaving it with a steep bill and concerns among residents that their local government infrastructure is “in danger of collapse”. One Redcar and…