Durham city, county governments hit by malware attack

This is not going to be the first, nor is it going to be the last.

Durham city, county governments hit by malware attack is the latest in probably tons of cases that may or may not cross my desk. The fact that a resident was quoted as saying that this is the first they’ve heard of the hacking is news to me.

This piece of malware which has hit more counties within the last year than I can count is responsible for a lot of potential damage. We do not know if anyone was hurt because of these persistant attacks.

The good news in this case is that nobody is hurt because it didn’t effect services like e911 and other critical services.

— The City of Durham and Durham County governments were victims of a cyber ransomware attack, officials said Sunday. In a joint statement, the city and county governments said each were notified of the malware attacks late Friday. Both government’s information technology teams responded immediately, according to the statement.
An email sent Sunday to State Bureau of Investigation employees said a ransomware started by a Russian hacker group hit the city’s systems. The randomware, called Ryuk, gets into networks when someone opens a malicious email attachment and then spreads across network servers.

It still starts at the employee level though and we must continue to train employees to be suspicious. I can’t state this enough, but I don’t think we’re giving enough training. How to fix this continuing problem?