【】
A borough and a town in Alaska have been hit by a devastating ransomware attack, forcing employees to completely forego computers and go back to typewriters and hand receipts.
Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su), a borough in the Anchorage Metropolitan Statistical Area, has declared disaster on Tuesday after being hit by several different strains of malware that crippled its computer infrastructure, including computers, servers, telephones and email exchange. The city of Valdez, Alaska, has also been hit by the malware attack.
"The cyber-attack has caused major disruption in Borough services and loss of productivity, which may continue for a prolonged time," Assembly Member Ted Leonard said at a Mat-Su Assembly meeting Tuesday.
SEE ALSO:Here’s how malicious Android apps are sneaking malware onto your phoneAccording to a report by Mat-Su borough's IT Director Eric Wyatt, the attack was "multi-pronged, multi-vectored", its components including the Emotet trojan horse, BitPaymer ransomware and an actual hacker logging into the borough's network.
Some of the malware was dormant on the borough's computers since as early as May 3, the report said, but the attack culminated on July 23, when the crypto locker portion of the malware started encrypting the drives of computers on the network. All in all, nearly all of the borough's 500 workstations and 120 out of 150 servers were affected. According to the report, this was a zero-day attack, meaning that it used exploits that were never seen before.
To give you an idea of the damage this type of attack can do on a city's infrastructure, here are some of the services that were affected: pool, libraries, animal care, landfill, collections, as well as a number of web services such as e-commerce. The Mat-Su government said Monday that "most data" was not lost to the cyber attack.
"Without computers and files, Borough employees acted resourcefully. They re-enlisted typewriters from closets, and wrote by hand receipts and lists of library book patrons and landfill fees at some of the 73 different buildings," Public Affairs Director at Mat-Su Patty Sullivan wrote in a post last week.
The BitPaymer ransomware made headlines in August 2017, when it hit several Scottish hospitals, causing delays and cancellations in procedures and appointments. Upon infection, it encrypts many of the files it finds, asking a cryptocurrency payment in order to unlock them.
Both the Mat-Su borough and the city of Valdez are cooperating with the FBI in restoring their services and investigating the attack, officials said.
Featured Video For You
Someone taught Amazon's Alexa sign language
TopicsCybersecurity
相关文章
We asked linguists if Donald Trump speaks like that on purpose
Donald Trump may do a good "drunk uncle at Thanksgiving" impersonation at his rallies, but amid all2024-11-10- 曼城前瞻:英超領頭羊大戰英冠副班長 晉級無懸念_彼得堡_足總杯_歐冠www.ty42.com 日期:2022-03-01 14:31:00| 評論(已有332911條評論)2024-11-10
- 巨人殺手!英冠第8連斬英超Big6 曼聯熱刺成刀下鬼_比賽_米德爾斯堡_足總杯www.ty42.com 日期:2022-03-02 08:01:00| 評論(已有332999條評論)2024-11-10
- 王秋明今天開始隨隊訓練 津門虎隊迎來“老熟人”_天津_賽季_河北www.ty42.com 日期:2022-03-01 09:31:00| 評論(已有332827條評論)2024-11-10
One of the most controversial power struggles in media comes to a close
One of the world's biggest media companies has been embroiled in a complex personal and professional2024-11-10- 瓜帥 :敘利亞等地都在遭受戰亂 隻有百姓無辜受苦_戰爭_庫特_德米爾www.ty42.com 日期:2022-03-02 09:31:00| 評論(已有333018條評論)2024-11-10
最新评论