Security News
Texas communities struggled for days with disruptions to core government services as workers in small cities and towns endured a cascade of frustrations brought on by the sophisticated cyberattack, according to thousands of pages of documents reviewed by The Associated Press and interviews with people involved in the response. In Borger, a city of fewer than 13,000, early indications were worrisome as the city raced to shut down its computers.
Rob Robinson, client partner in utilities practice for Capgemini, talks with TechRepublic about what the catastrophic outages in Texas should teach us about predicting threats to U.S. the power grid.
I think what you're going to see is that in the normal band of operation, I think, not just in Texas, but around the country, there's a lot of scenario planning, there's a lot of analytics that are present and used up from real-time, what they call, state estimation and situational wellness to situational awareness all the way to 20-year modeling to keep this grid stable. I think it's going to be a combination of modeling, not just the power grid, but the gas grid, of that water infrastructure-there's a whole huge behavioral modeling frontier that's going to be opened up.
Texas electric utility Austin Energy today warned of unknown individuals impersonating the company and threatening customers over the phone that their power will be cut off unless they pay fictitious overdue bills. During these ongoing scam attempts, the scammers warn the customers that their utilities will be disconnected if they don't make immediate payments, "Typically using a reloadable prepaid debit card or other non-traceable form of payment."
Tech giant Oracle Corp. said Friday it will move its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, and let many employees choose their office locations and decide whether to work from home. "We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work," the company said in a regulatory filing.
The company's response was less than solid gold - it took months to notify its users of the breach. In a notice sent to its online customers, the company said that it became aware of suspicious activity on its website on July 6.
Tyler C. King, a 31-year-old from Dallas, Texas, was sentenced this week to 57 months in prison for crimes related to the hacking of an unnamed major tech company based in New York. According to the Justice Department, King gained access to the technology firm's systems in 2015 with the help of Ashley St. Andria, who at the time was an employee of the company.
"There doesn't seem to be any mitigation of the growing trend of online crime. The first line of defense from online fraud is not a technology solution or even law enforcement; it's user awareness. From a policy perspective, governments and other institutions should get the word out more so that individuals and organizations are more sensitive to online threats." The most popular internet crimes tracked by the FBI were extortion, government impersonation, and business email compromise, which cost victims $1.8 billion in 2019.
Texas' transportation agency has become the second part of the state government to be hit by a ransomware attack in recent days. On Thursday, someone hacked into the Texas Department of Transportation's network in a "Ransomware event," according to a statement the department posted on social media Friday.
A ransomware attack has hit the information technology office that supports Texas appellate courts and judicial agencies, leading to their websites and computer servers being shut down. Specifically affected is the Office of Court Administration, which is the IT provider for the appellate courts and state judicial agencies within the Texas Judicial Branch.