Posted on 12/24/2020 2:09:53 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
WASHINGTON - The U.S. cybersecurity agency said on Wednesday that a sprawling cyber espionage campaign made public earlier this month is affecting state and local governments, although it released few additional details.
The hacking campaign, which used U.S. tech company SolarWinds as a springboard to penetrate federal government networks, was “impacting enterprise networks across federal, state, and local governments, as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations,” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a statement posted to its website.
The CISA said last week that U.S. government agencies, critical infrastructure entities, and private groups were among those affected, but did not specifically mention state or local bodies. So far only a handful of federal government agencies have officially confirmed having been affected, including the U.S. Treasury Department, the Commerce Department, and the Department of Energy.
CISA did not identify the state or local agencies affected and did not immediately return an email seeking additional detail on the notice.
Reuters has previously reported that Pima County, Arizona was among the victims of the wave of intrusions.
The county did not immediately return a message seeking comment late Wednesday. The county’s chief information officer previously told Reuters his team had taken its SolarWinds software offline immediately after the hack became public and that investigators had not found any evidence of a further compromise.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Wonder what’s in Pima County that would be of interest to them?
You could easily pass fake bills to county finance officials, on various contracts, and have them continually paying for fake services. A couple of years into this, the county would wake up and realize they’d paid $20-million out for a fraudulent collection of bills. No recovery mechanism...the fiscal stability of the county would be drawn into question.
You could do this to virtually every single county in AZ, and quietly bankrupt the state.
Last year, in Germany...a fake ‘last-minute’ bill came up with a fake e-mail from the CEO of a lumber company to pay out around 1-million Euro. The finance officer paid it, and then realized hours later of the problem....but it was too late to recover the money.
In my business we have a secure internal only email address for just that reason.
Wow! It’s just a bottomless pit of corruption everywhere you turn nowadays. Thank you for your insight.
Those lebels of government have heard the warnings since the Obama years.
They have chosen to fund their paychecks, instead.
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