These past two months have been a nightmare for Saint Paul. Both North and South Saint Paul have experienced some form of a cyber attack. Just last week on July 28th, both North St Paul and St Paul experienced a cyber attack on their emergency services. Then last Friday, another cyber attack occurred. The information is still developing so I'll try to just talk about what we know for sure.
On another note, this is the last week of class! I don't plan on keeping this blog updated every week outside of the scope of the class. But I hope if any fellow students read this, that they enjoyed my blog posts. Good luck everyone on their final!
Back to the cyber attacks in Minnesota. After the attack last Friday, Governor Waltz declared a State of Emergency and called in the National Guard. According to KSTP, local, state, and federal agencies are investigating the attack. Two firms have been acquired to investigate what happened. The disruptions are affecting access to online services and internal systems. Though it is stated that 911 services are online, despite back-end challenges. Other systems affected included Wi-Fi, and disruptions to libraries’ collections management systems.
Since the attack is still under investigation, and possibly underway, not much is known about the intentions of the bad actors responsible. It is still unknown if financial information or credential information was accessed or released on the dark web.
The city's response was fairly quick, receiving a notification of suspicious activity Friday morning, and shutting the systems down by the afternoon. Many citizens complained of the lack of services, but in my opinion, I'd rather have it shut down than my information being actively ransacked. Naturally those unfamiliar with digital crime have a harder time understanding.
KARE 11 has some exclusive information on the first cyber attack on the North St Paul system, stating that the access to the system was granted via a phishing email that compromised one email in the police department. They also claim that St Paul's attack seems more related to ransomware than phishing. According to Rawlins, the business continuity plan for St Paul was four hours, but he says that won't be the case for this attack.
So far, there are no demands for a ransom.
This news is piping hot and I'm excited to see what actually happened and if all these agencies will have any luck discovering the perpetrator.
As always, there are bad actors, even police officers need to learn about phishing! Keep your passwords unique and complex, and try to pay attention to your credit at all times.
Have a great summer!
Articles Read
- Minnesota National Guard activated, state of emergency declared after cyberattack against St. Paul
- North St. Paul says hack came after phishing attack on police department
- St. Paul, MN, was hacked so badly that the National Guard has been deployed