DALLAS UNDER CYBERATTACK

[the elastic]

@BrothaZay you good? Or was it you?

 

[the elastic]

Ransomware attack hampering Dallas police operations

The outage is impacting the computer system that directs police to emergencies and other calls.

www.cbsnews.com

The City of Dallas confirmed that a ransomware attack compromised a number of servers in its system, including the Dallas Police Department's website.

Late Monday morning, CBS News Texas' J.D. Miles reported that the outage impacted the department's computer assisted dispatch system, called CAD, which directs police to emergencies and other calls.

The issue forced 911 call takers to manually write down instructions for the responding officers, who were only able to respond through their phones and radios.

 

[Buddy]

DEZ CAUGHT IT!!

 

[the elastic]

City of Dallas impacted by ransomware attack, police computer dispatch system down

The city released a statement on Wednesday afternoon confirming that a number of servers have been compromised with ransomware, impacting “several functional areas."

www.fox4news.com

The city says security monitoring tools first spotted the attack on Wednesday morning.

Parts of the city's library site are also down. FOX 4 called the Dallas library staff, who told us services like getting a new library card were unavailable Wednesday because its system was down.

They also had to manually write down readers information if they checked out a book.

A message from the city's Chief Financial Officer, Jack Ireland, obtained by FOX 4 explains the situation:

"Early this morning, the City's security monitoring tools notified our Security Operations Center (SOC) that a likely ransomware attack had been launched within our environment. Subsequently, we have confirmed that a number of servers have been compromised with ransomware, impacting several functional areas. The team is actively working to isolate the ransomware to prevent its spread, to remove the ransomware from infected servers, and to restore any services currently impacted. Pursuant to the City's Incident Response Plan (IRP), the purpose of this message is to provide notification of an established security incident. We will provide further information about the remediation efforts and potential impacts to City services when available."

Ransomware is a widespread problem in which criminals gain access to computer servers, lock them out and demand payment in exchange for access.

While the Dallas city manager is not making any public statements about this ransomware attack, city's Government Performance and Financial Management Committee Chair Cara Mendelsohn and Vice Chair Gay Donnell Willis told us in a joint statement:

"Our vendors are on-site to assist IT management and staff in restoring functionality as soon as possible. We are encouraged the attack was limited due to newly implemented tools, but seems to have focused on public safety and servers that have impacted 311 primarily. Continued investment and updates to our IT department are needed to continue securing City of Dallas resident data and essential city records."

 

[Germms]

Don't get lazy with your info sec and this won't happen.

 

[Spence]

Somebody clicked on a Russian porn link at the 911 dispatch office I bet

 

[ORDER_66]

this is a test or real???

 

[MR. SNIFLES]

Somebody clicked on a Russian porn link at the 911 dispatch office I bet

IN MOTHER RUSSIA, PORN DOWNLOADS YOU.

 

[Sterling Archer]

Dallas shutting down cause a city worker was on pornhub.

 

[BK The Great]

Spooky

 

[doublecheese]

shyt happened to my job...really fukked the company over. And im pretty sure they got finessed by the hackers and never got the encryption key.

 

[BaggerofTea]

Dallas shutting down cause a city worker was on pornhub.

it was probably phishing

 

[TELL ME YA CHEESIN FAM?]

@BrothaZay you good? Or was it you?

That nikka stupid worried about his anti-Harlem porn stash

 

[skyrunner1]

Don't get Cheap and lazy with your info sec and this won't happen.

word @JT-Money

 

[IIVI]

When you read that thread, it's absolutely crazy how bad they say security is. All this online data and basically plastic security.

Spoiler: Some highlights.

Working in security - nothing, anywhere is very well secured. At best companies have processes in place to triage and respond to the incidents that can cause the most fallout, at worst companies have security protocols in place that check boxes during audits but don't actually do anything in practice.

There's currently one senior dev who understands the system for 15,000 doctors in Canada. There's lots of people to install and support it, but understanding the 1.5 million line code base... it's down to one - Yay corporate mergers!

This is the scariest realization I have had is how vulnerable most data is. Security is so low on the list of priorities in the corner cutting culture of tech

What gets me is the absolute lack of insight into what is going on.

I love the engineers saying their on prem or cloud setup is tight and secure. How do you fukking even know? You have absolutely no insight into what is going on after that firewall is passed. Sure you might have some hardened VM images and MAYBE, some internal TLS and network segmentation if you're in a good house. But we sit looking at these big online posts about a data breach and it had been going on for years.

There is no automation or audit ever implemented for that stuff. The cloud isn't too bad as you get unexpected activity alerts and such, but on prem its even harder.

Having done some cybersecurity research and evaluations in my career, I can tell you that modern society is built on a deck of cards.

I've found critical infrastructure running windows 95, hooked up to the internet.

Every factory, industrial lab, HVAC system, traffic light system, etc. reliy on embedded controllers that all share the same default passwords, that are in the manual. It's no wonder stuxnet was so effective.

And that's not even accounting for the weakest part of it all, the human element.

I'm convinced that the only thing that keeps an attacker from bringing us to the stone age, is a mutually assured destruction.

Being in FinTech for a while it's amazing how little engineers tend to know about proper ways to store sensitive data.

Being in Fintech has kinda had a “how the sausage is made” effect on me. I’m this close to taking all my money from the bank and storing it in my mattress.

Worked in a debt collector agency once. U won't believe how customers's sensitive information(SSN, name, address,...) are stored. Clients often send us text files of customers's info without encryption. Only 2-3 people can see those files, but still

The lowlights though (sort by new and read from there)

Remember those phrases:
"Show me a 10 ft. wall and I'll show you an 11 ft. ladder."
"When there's a will, there's a way."
etc.
Now imagine stopping that. That's why people say the attacker has the advantage. They keep on thinking of clever ways and black swans to interrupt systems.

Nonetheless, the funniest post though about tech in that thread:

These comments are hilarious and true. Despite everyone here thinking their job is on par with neurosurgeons, we generally do shytty work that leads to shytty products.