Hank Tester reports that a third city in Florida has disclosed a cyberattack. In the past month, we’ve seen Riviera Beach and Lake City both wind up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom to attackers who managed to lock up systems with ransomware. In this newest case, we have not yet been told…
Category: Government Sector
Seven weeks after a crippling ransomware attack, Lake City agrees to pay almost $500,000 ransom demand
On June 11, DataBreaches.net noted a report that Lake City, Florida was struggling to recover from “triple threat ransomware.” The attack had occurred on May 10, and one month later, the city’s landline phones were still knocked out and other services were also affected, although emergency services were operating. Now, one week after another Florida…
Borough of Westwood, NJ provides notice of a data breach that began in 2018
WESTWOOD, N.J., June 25, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — On or around December 22, 2018, Westwood became aware of unusual activity on the Westwood network. Westwood immediately launched an investigation into the activity, which included working with a leading third-party forensic investigation firm, to determine the nature of the activity. The investigation confirmed that malware was introduced on…
Taiwan’s civil service system reports data breach
Huang Tzu-ti reports: Taiwan’s civil service system reported an information security breach incident on Monday (June 24), with the personal information of at least 240,000 civil servants being compromised. Through a notice published on its website, the Ministry of Civil Service (MOCS) said it received a tip-off on June 22 about the data breach, suggesting…
AU: Inside the police database that holds 40 million private records and any officer can access
Over the years, this site has noted reports of misuse of law enforcement databases by police employees. Here’s a report from Australia. Greg Miskelly and Peta Doherty report: An ABC investigation has exposed privacy breaches of the central police records database that holds files on millions of Australians. The Computerised Operational Policing System (COPS) database…
Ex-Senate aide sentenced to 4 years in prison for data leak
Matthew Daly of AP reports: A former congressional staffer was sentenced to four years in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to illegally posting online the home addresses and telephone numbers of five Republican senators who backed Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Jackson A. Cosko, a former computer systems administrator in the office of Sen. Maggie…