Tag Archive for: Community

Clackamas Community College recovering after ‘ransomware attack’

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PORTLAND, Ore. — After a cyberattack closed Clackamas Community College for nearly a week, students are back in class. 

The college says they became aware of an online issue on Jan. 19, and students were unable to log in to the school’s online portal, Moodle.

“I see that Moodle is down; I was like, ‘Oh shoot, I can’t get my homework’,” first-year student Kainoa Medina said. “Then I was like, ‘Let me check my information,’ couldn’t access it and I was like, ‘This is a really big problem.”

About 16,000 students and 900 faculty members were locked out of the college’s network. A spokesperson for Clackamas Community College called it an “attempted ransomware attack,” and CCC President Tim Cook described it as “a significant cybersecurity incident.”

While the school was able to isolate some systems from the network to protect them, they’re still investigating exactly what happened and the extent of the impact. 

“Usually, this is something like ransomware. A piece of software gets in, and it ends up taking hold of part of their environment or most of it,” said Patrick Miller, CEO of Ampere Industrial Security. “Especially with schools, municipalities, it’s actually more common than you’d think.”

Miller said an attack like this one usually originates out of the U.S., and often times, the hackers will ask for a ransom. 

“It’s usually international actors that do this. It’s usually international organized crime rings,” Miller explained.

CCC did not say whether those bad actors that orchestrated the attack asked for money or if anyone’s personal information was compromised, but that’s something Medina is worried about.

“It was sinking in; it was like, ‘Okay, well my information is probably stolen’,” Medina said. “This is very unfortunate, and yes, I was very scared.”

Miller says it can be difficult for any organization to defend against ransomware. 

“The bad guys have to be right just once. They get one person to click on a link; they’ve got to get one person to open the wrong email,” Miller said. “It’s more and more difficult by the day to actually discern whether these things are real or not.”

Oregon City Police told KGW their officers responded to the incident initially, but that…

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Hawaii Community College pays ransomware group 

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Hawaii Community College last week paid an undisclosed sum to a ransomware group that stole the personal information of approximately 28,000 people and threatened to post it online.

The college posted a statement on its website July 26 that it had “made the difficult decision to negotiate with the threat actors in order to protect the individuals whose sensitive information might have been compromised.” 

The ransomware group NoEscape claimed responsibility for the attack, threatening to publish 65 gigabytes of stolen data from the institution on June 19. The college said the group has a “documented history of publicly posting the stolen personal information of individuals when agreement with the impacted entity was not reached.”

The college said it worked with an external team of cybersecurity experts until it had “reached an agreement with the threat actors to destroy all of the information it illegally obtained.” The college did not disclose how much it paid NoEscape, which is believed to be a successor to the Avaddon ransomware group. Avaddon previously requested as much as $10 million from its victims.

The college said it’s sending letters to those affected with offers of credit monitoring and identity theft protection. The college recommended those impacted freeze their credit, review their account statements carefully and implement multi-factor authentication on their devices. 

The college said it will continue to restore its IT infrastructure, with an estimated completion date of Aug. 14.

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Ransomware attack strikes Hawaii Community College

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Jun. 21—Hawaii Community College has been struck with a ransomware attack, and security measures are being increased to protect digital assets, University of Hawaii officials said Tuesday.

“Hawaii CC representatives are actively working with federal authorities and cybersecurity experts,” a university statement said.

“The Hawaii CC campus was notified of a cybersecurity incident on Tuesday, June 13, shortly after UH was made aware of the situa­tion,” the statement continued. “UH System Information Technology Serv­ices responded immediately and took the Hawaii CC network offline and took additional steps to protect all UH networks. Hawaii CC is the only UH campus identified in the attack by the group claiming responsibility.”

Cybersecurity experts at UH do not think any of the other nine UH campuses have been affected.

When asked which ransomware group or platform was responsible, what kinds of data may have been compromised and what steps students and university employees should take, UH spokesman Dan Meisenzahl said those issues are part of the ongoing investigation and cannot be discussed. But he confirmed that the university “has increased scanning and monitoring and is deploying additional security technologies.”

The bad actor is “holding numerous companies and agencies ransom. Not just Hawaii CC,” Meisenzahl added. “This is happening to hundreds of agencies, hospitals, businesses around the county for the last few years now. It was always a matter of when and not if it would happen.”

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Pittsburgh Jewish community monitoring hate speech amid trial of synagogue shooting suspect

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The head of security for Pittsburgh’s Jewish community says there has been an “uptick in hate speech” on the internet, but no specific threats, in the early stages of the trial of the man accused of killing 11 worshippers at a synagogue here in 2018.

And Jewish leaders say that while the trial is bringing out the worst of extremists in some dark corners of the web, it’s also brought an outpouring of support from the community — ranging from law enforcement agencies helping with security to local food vendors collaborating to bring meals to victims’ families during the trial.

Shawn Brokos, director of community security for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, said officials have monitored “general chatter in support of the defendant … and his hateful vitriol” on the internet. The materials “would turn anyone’s stomach,” she said.

Brokos and others spoke Friday at a news conference at the federation’s offices to talk about how the Jewish community has been preparing for the federal trial in the worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Jury selection began April 24 and is slated to continue at least into next week, followed by further weeks in which jurors will weigh the defendant’s guilt and potentially a death sentence.

Pittsburgh synagogues and other institutions have received physical improvements in security and have conducted recent training to prepare for security incidents, Brokos said. No threats have been received, but officials are bracing for the possibility that some white-supremacist groups may show up in support of the defendant.

“We’d much rather be in a proactive stance and out in front of any potential threats,” she added.

As the trial moves forward, “we will lean on one another for strength and support, we’ll empower one another to live full Jewish lives, but reinforce to one another that we need to remain continually…

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