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Thread: Chaos In Baltimore: City Government Paralyzed By Cryptocurrency Ransomware Attack

  1. #1

    Chaos In Baltimore: City Government Paralyzed By Cryptocurrency Ransomware Attack

    One week after troubled ex-Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh resigned after a criminal probe over her children's book series, the entire Baltimore City computer network system was shut down after a ransomware attack, The Baltimore Sun reports. Across the city, multiple intergovernmental agencies sent employees home Tuesday after email servers and communications platforms went dark. And according to a press meeting on Wednesday morning, the city’s communication system remains down.
    Lester Davis, a spokesman for Mayor Bernard C. "Jack" Young, said the 911 emergency system was not affected but provided details about how the ransomware paralyzed important communication servers.
    City officials had isolated the ransomware to computers associated with severs tied to the city's communication network, Davis said by late Tuesday afternoon, but how the infection penetrated the city's firewalls and the scale of the problem still remains unknown, he said. Davis also had no timeline about when the affected systems would be back online.
    Dave Fitz, a spokesman for the FBI Baltimore Field Office, told The Baltimore Sun that special agents from its cyber squad were on site investigating the serious incident.
    Don Norris, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said the ransomware attack underlines how municipal governments struggle to protect their networks from hackers.
    "You’ve got increasingly sophisticated and very persistent bad guys out there looking for any vulnerability they can find and local governments, including Baltimore, who either don’t have the money or don’t spend it to properly protect their assets," said Norris.
    Ransomware is a type of malware designed to block operators from using computer systems or specific data until a ransom is paid.
    The Baltimore Sun said the ransomware was identified as RobbinHood. The hackers demanded cryptocurrency as the preferred payment to unlock the files.
    Davis said the malware attack in Baltimore City was similar to one that disabled computer systems in Greenville, North Carolina, last month. City Councilman Ryan Dorsey said City Hall employees were instructed on Tuesday afternoon to disconnect all devices from the network.
    "Everybody has been instructed to unplug the Ethernet cable and turn off power to their computers, printers and such," Dorsey said. "It’s apparently spreading computer to computer."
    Hackers wrote in a note that 3 Bitcoins (equivalent to about $17,667 at current prices) will unlock each system, or approximately 13 Bitcoins (worth $76,557) to unlock the city's entire communication system. Apparently that amount is too much for Baltimore to afford.
    The note also told city officials that if they contacted law enforcement that all communication would be cut off. It also emphasized that anti-virus software would damage the computers. The ransomware’s procedures are completely automated.


    More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...somware-attack
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

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  3. #2
    About five days after Baltimore City government was paralyzed by cryptocurrency ransomware, which infected computers associated with severs tied to the city's communication network have been isolated and cleaned, reported The Baltimore Sun. But hackers are still accessing the network over the weekend, leading to a more in-depth investigation by the FBI, according to acting Mayor Jack Young.
    "These people are so sophisticated that their job is just to disrupt," Young said. "I wish they would use it for more good than they are for just bad in trying to extort money from cities and companies. It's just not right."
    Last Wedsenday, we were one of the first to report that hackers brought Baltimore's entire communication network to a halt.


    The FBI hasn't released any details yet, but ransomware is suspected to be behind the incident. Here's an update from the mayor on Saturday:
    "No city services have been affected. People were able to get their cars at the towing yard, people come in and pay in cash or money orders or they can mail their payments in. So all the city is functioning. We're doing it a different way and the citizens of Baltimore are not being affected we just cannot get emails and those kinds of things," Young said. "We are moving forward and citizens should not notice anything other than they have to come in and do things manually."
    Last week, city employees were sent home as their computers were completely inoperable.

    Max Reuling, a consultant at the Baltimore City Department of Public Works and project manager at TFE Resources, said operations came to a halt last Tuesday after the ransomware attack brought down the email and critical work programs tied to Baltimore's servers. TFE Resources is a private company responsible for maintaining Baltimore's water and sewage lines. As of Saturday, he said specific communication systems were still down.
    As for the ransom, Young said the hackers would get no Bitcoins.

    More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...baltimore-city
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  4. #3
    A new report from The Baltimore Sun shows the hack has disrupted city servers for the eighth straight day. This time, essential systems required for transacting real estate deals have gone offline, throwing the entire industry across the city into chaos, which means no homes can currently be bought or sold.

    As of Wedsenday, all real estate transactions have ground to a halt because title insurance companies cannot access city servers to verify properties are free of liens to create a new deed. Those processes have been disrupted by the ransomware attack, according to title insurance companies and real estate agents.
    The hack has also affected the city's collection of transfer and property taxes and water bills.
    Amy Caplan, the operations manager at Broadview Title, said servers that hold critical real estate data crashed Friday. Then Monday, title companies began issuing notices telling their agents to stop all transactions in the city.
    "It's crippling the entire city for sure," Caplan said. "There's just no resolution. It seems like there's no contingency plan in place for Baltimore city."
    Mayor Bernard C. "Jack" Young told City Council members Monday that the ransomware paralyzed the city's entire real estate industry. Young said officials were "working to minimize any impact on real estate transactions."


    On Tuesday, the mayor's spokesperson said officials were attempting to gain access to its servers "to accurately provide an accounting of outstanding liens against properties scheduled for closings."
    "They're working with outside experts and hope to gain access to the information as quickly as possible," spokesman Lester Davis said in an email.
    These outside experts could be special cyber agents from the Baltimore FBI Field Office.
    Georgiana Tyler, president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors, said the city had spent the last several days trying to access servers that are critical to the real estate industry. Tyler wasn't sure when the problem would be resolved.
    Real estate data shows more than 1,500 sales are pending across Baltimore, and the ransomware attack is expected to halt dozens of transactions this week.
    Realtor R.J.Breeden, the owner of The Breeden Group, who has dozens of homes listed throughout the city, said the hack is a loss of confidence in city officials. Breeden said several of his deals this week won't be closing because the title company he uses cannot write a deed without accessing lien certifications on city severs.
    Breeden warned: "the entire real estate industry has come to a standstill."

    Realtor Joy Sushinsky, an agent with Long & Foster, said one of her deals has already folded because of the hack. Another deal is scheduled for Wednseday afternoon, and if that cannot be completed, the buyer and seller will have to pay $2,600 in extra costs. Sushinsky said this is a huge loss of revenue for her; she's diving into her savings to pay her assistant.
    "It's just a mess," she said.
    First American Title Insurance Co. instructed agents on Monday to stop all transactions.
    "While the City is aware of the problems created by the inability to accept or process real property sales and loan transactions and is working on a solution, it is unable to give a time frame on when it will be able to re-open. We have been told to check in weekly," the company wrote.
    "We understand that the situation presents difficulties for our agents, but feel that under the circumstances, declining to insure until systems are back in full service is the only way to approach the problem."
    An unnamed official at the city's housing department said the ransomware had prohibited its ability to dish out money to grant programs to incentivize buyers.

    Another unnamed official said it could take weeks to restore the servers.

    More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...es-real-estate
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  5. #4
    Approximately 10,000 Baltimore City government computers remain crippled after a cryptocurrency ransomware attack locked officials out of critical servers, basically paralyzing the city for 14 days and counting.

    We were one of the first to report the May 7th attack that brought Baltimore's entire communication network to a standstill. Hackers wanted 13 bitcoins (about $100,000) on day one of the attacks but have since demanded $10,000 per day since city officials refused to pay the ransom late last week.
    Mayor Bernard C. "Jack" Young has warned the attack continues to devastate the city, could take months to recover some servers.
    "It's extremely alarming," said City Council President Brandon Scott.
    Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins computer science professor and cybersecurity expert, told NPR the ransomware used in the attack is "unbreakable," and so powerful that even government specialists cannot crack the code to unlock the city's computer network.
    "I don't even think that the NSA would be able to break this algorithm," Rubin said.
    "It's believed by the cryptographic community, both the theoreticians as well as the practitioners, to be unbreakable by today's technologies."
    This is Baltimore's second cyber attack in a little more than a year. Last March, a ransomware attack on the city's emergency communications network forced dispatchers to relay addresses and other critical information to first responders via phone or text.
    As the city remains paralyzed on Wednesday, numerous services provided by the local government are either offline or workarounds have been developed.

    On the eighth day of the attack (May 15th), we reported the essential systems required for transacting real estate deals went offline, throwing the entire housing industry into chaos, which meant no homes could be bought or sold in the area. But it was only until yesterday, where officials launched a manual workaround for property sales.
    The City of Baltimore has developed a manual workaround that will allow real estate transactions to proceed during the City's technology outage. Starting tomorrow, the Wolman Municipal Building will be open from 7am - 7pm, Monday - Friday. Instructions below - please share! pic.twitter.com/lvvoa7maTX
    — Bill Henry (@BillforBmore) May 19, 2019
    Daniel Tobok, CEO of Cytelligence, whose company has advised 500 cities hit by ransomware attacks, told Fox News "he doesn't necessarily advocate paying off cyber crooks, he believes that in some instances "you don't have a choice, you have to make a business decision."
    "What's frustrating with Baltimore is that it's been quite a long time since the infection," Tobok said. "If they aren't fully operational by now, why are they still playing with this?"
    Tobok warned if city officials don't resolve the hack attack immediately, the economic damage to the city could be devastating.
    "Baltimore is playing with time," he said. "They are going to come to a point where they have two choices - A. The (ransom demands) are going to skyrocket or B. The hackers will shut down the account they have been using and move out."
    The FBI's cyber team has been working for 10-days straight to help Baltimore resolve their issues.
    Baltimore City's Inspector General said the attack came about one week after a city employee was fired for downloading thousands of pictures of porn onto his work computer.
    In the last month, separate cyber attacks have also affected Stuart City, Florida; municipality of Greenville, North Carolina; New York state; Cleveland Airport; Genesee County, Michigan; and Fisher County in Texas.


    More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...somware-attack
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  6. #5
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    Incoming "Russia did it!"
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  7. #6
    The ransomware attacks in Baltimore and other US cities appear to have a common thread: they're using NSA tools on the agency's home soil. In-the-know security experts talking to the New York Times said the malware in the cyberattacks is using the NSA's stolen EternalBlue as a "key component," much like WannaCry and NotPetya. While the full list of affected cities isn't available, San Antonio and the Pennsylvania city of Allentown have reportedly been victims of EternalBlue-based campaigns.




    Microsoft has issued fixes for affected Windows version after the NSA disclosed the long-secret vulnerabilities. However, these attacks frequently succeed due to fragmented local governments that tend to be cautious about upgrades. In addition to using a mishmash of software and configurations that complicates updates, cities may be hesitant to patch or upgrade their software due to compatibility concerns and tight budgets.
    And unfortunately, the NSA isn't likely to help. While it helped Microsoft patch the security hole after EternalBlue became public in 2017, it has so far turned down discussion of the flaw and hasn't even acknowledged that the code loss took place. The NSA and FBI have declined to comment on the new revelations.
    Whatever its involvement, incidents like Baltimore's highlight a problem with the NSA and other intelligence agencies hoarding exploits. The practice only works so long as officials have total control over vulnerabilities and the matching hacking tools. If data for either gets out, they effectively give criminals and foreign spies an advantage over an unprepared public. And when these exploits seldom discriminate between countries, they can cause plenty of damage at home.



    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/25/...tolen-nsa-tool
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  8. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    In addition to using a mishmash of software and configurations that complicates updates, cities may be hesitant to patch or upgrade their software due to compatibility concerns and tight budgets.
    Ha, ANY major city could hire plenty of computer security by axing just 20 of the fat pigs that rides along the gravy train in the bureaucracy.

    I have no pity for Baltimore. I see how they spent their money.

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by UWDude View Post
    Ha, ANY major city could hire plenty of computer security by axing just 20 of the fat pigs that rides along the gravy train in the bureaucracy.

    I have no pity for Baltimore. I see how they spent their money.
    The fat is always the LAST thing cut out of the budget.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment



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  11. #9
    This could be a huge land grab. I remember in movie Joe Kidd. Louis Chama was upset the Mexican's land was stolen. They had deeds filed at the court. The white land owners claimed they owned the land. Mexican's claimed they owned it. But one day there was a fire at the courthouse destroying all the records.

    Wouldn't surprise me if someone or more than one in government is involved.

  12. #10
    I am surprised Baltimore is still there . Figured they would have given it back to the british by now ,except Fells Point . That is where all the cheap hookers used to hang out back in the day . That part was pretty American . The rest of it was a big commie toilet bowl . It is amazing what a few decades of bad leadership can do to a large city .
    Do something Danke

  13. #11
    What if it is all a false flag to pursue extreme cybersecurity measures.

  14. #12
    Baltimore has been struggling with an aggressive cyber-attack over the last five weeks, previously profiled here, it has now been revealed the attack will cost the city $18.2 million, reported WBAL-TV 11.
    The cost estimates were disclosed at a recent City Council budget hearing: city officials have already paid $4.6 million for recovery efforts since the ransomware was discovered May 7 and could spend an additional $5.4 million in 2H19. The remaining $8.2 million is from the loss or delayed revenue and loss of interest and penalty income.
    Henry Raymond, #Baltimore Financial Dir., says the #ransomware attack will not affect the city’s tax bills, which will will go out on time in July - says it’s costing $18 million @wbalradio pic.twitter.com/NYlYBHTkCg
    — Phil Yacuboski (@WBALPhil) June 4, 2019
    As of Tuesday, 35% of city employees had their email accounts restored, with the possibility of a full system restore by the end of the week.
    Baltimore City Ransomware update:
    35% of city employees back on line with new passwords..should be 90% by end of week
    Prop tax bills going out as usual July 1
    Still no water billing
    Est cost of attack: $18 mi
    Ransom demand: $80k
    US Conf of Mayors passing resolution to never pay pic.twitter.com/4E4zORnUDC
    — Jayne Miller (@jemillerwbal) June 4, 2019
    Some city operations have been shut down for the last month. Public works officials said no residents have received water bills because of the cyber attack.
    Three weeks ago, we reported all essential systems required for transacting real estate deals in the city went offline becuase of the hack.

    Realtor R.J.Breeden, the owner of The Breeden Group, who has dozens of homes listed throughout the city, said the hack is a loss of confidence in city officials. Breeden said several of his deals last month didn't close because the title company he uses couldn't write a deed without accessing lien certifications on city severs.
    Hackers demanded the city pay an $80,000 ransom in Bitcoin on May 7, but Mayor Bernard C. "Jack" Young refused to pay. To be fair, the cost of a full system restore of the city's servers would have been in the millions of dollars if the ransomware was paid.
    "Even if you pay, you still have to go into your system and make sure they're out of it. You can't just bring it back up and believe they are gone. We would bear much of these costs regardless," Deputy Chief of Staff, Sheryl Goldstein, said.
    Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger was briefed last week by the National Security Agency that the Baltimore ransomware attack had nothing to do with a stolen NSA tool, contrary to our earlier reporting.
    Members of Maryland's congressional delegation, including Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen and Reps. Ruppersberger, Elijah Cummings, John Sarbanes and David Trone, received a classified government briefing on Monday about the incident.

    More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ast-18-million
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment



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