Tag Archive for: Hasn’t

Lawyer says MPS hasn’t contacted hacking victims 5 months later


Thousands of files, including sensitive information, were released online in March after the district didn’t pay a $1 million ransom.

MINNEAPOLIS — Five months after cyber criminals attacked Minneapolis Public Schools, a new, scathing report from the Associated Press says that officials still haven’t informed the victims.

Some of the information, including highly sensitive medical records, like assault complaints, social security numbers and union grievances, were leaked online after the district didn’t pay a $1 million ransom. 

One lawyer now representing some of the victims says his firm is investigating whether the district violated any of its obligations under Minnesota’s Data Practices Act. 

The breach, that the Minneapolis school district said included the release of personal data, wasn’t disclosed until mid-March. Experts call it an aggressive attack that included 300,000 files

“This is not an MPS problem, this is not a Minneapolis problem, this is not a public school problem,” said cybersecurity expert Ian Coldwater. “This happens all over the place to all kinds of places.”

Research shows one in three districts across the country were breached by 2021. What little resources there were then were spent on remote learning and internet connectivity.

Minnesota’s IT specialists confirm it got a $5.5 million boost from lawmakers this legislative session. The state also got another $18 million in federal funds that entities, like school districts, can apply for to upgrade its infrastructure. 

“These families are floored and totally taken by surprise,” said attorney Jeff Storms, who represents some of the victims. 

“They had no idea their children’s sensitive information had been leaked on the internet and from what we’ve seen from the scope of this breach, the district did not take reasonable measures to…

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Claim about an insurrectionist trying to send a Pelosi laptop to Russia hasn’t been proven :: WRAL.com


— Arguing that the Capitol insurrection damaged US national security, one of the House impeachment managers, Rep. Joaquin Castro, spoke Thursday about the theft of a laptop from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.

“At least one of the insurrectionists may have intended to steal information and give it to a foreign adversary. According to charging documents, Riley Williams allegedly helped steal a laptop from Speaker Pelosi’s office to ‘send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service,'” Castro said.

Facts First: Castro appropriately hedged his claim by saying “may,” but it’s still worth emphasizing that the allegation that Williams intended to send the Pelosi laptop to Russia has not been proven. While the FBI has alleged that Williams had a role in the theft of the laptop, the FBI said in a January court document that that the claim that she had a desire to send the laptop to Russia “remains under investigation”; the FBI explained that this claim was made by a tipster who said they were a former romantic partner of Williams. A lawyer for Williams told a court in January that claims about Williams and the laptop “came in part from a former abusive boyfriend” who has “threatened” her.

Williams, a Pennsylvania woman in her early 20s, faces multiple charges over the insurrection, including aiding/abetting the theft of government property. She has not been charged with stealing the laptop herself.

The FBI said in a court document that the former romantic partner of Williams alleged that “the transfer of the computer device to Russia fell through for unknown reasons” and that Williams “still has the computer device or destroyed it.” Williams has denied the accusations against her.

It is unclear how much intelligence value the laptop might have to Russia. Pelosi deputy chief of staff Drew Hammill tweeted in January that a computer was stolen from a conference room and that it “was only used for presentations.”

According to the FBI, a video taken by Williams during the insurrection shows an HP laptop on a desk in Pelosi’s…

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Christopher Krebs Hasn’t Been Fired, Yet


Mr. Krebs’s team worked with states to scan and patch systems for vulnerabilities, lock up voter registration databases and voter rolls, change default passwords, turn on two-factor authentication, and print out paper backups, all to build up “resilience” in case of attack. He was protecting, he said, “the crown jewels of election administration.”

When the pandemic upended everything, Mr. Krebs’s team shifted focus to securing vote-by-mail systems, despite the president’s campaign again them. That was when Mr. Krebs’s agency got in the White House’s cross hairs.

In interviews, Mr. Krebs countered Mr. Trump by saying mail-in voting would make the election more secure by creating a paper trail, critical for audits to establish that every legal ballot was correctly counted.

It also made state registration databases more critical: an attack that froze or sabotaged voter-registration data — by switching addresses, marking registered voters as unregistered or deleting voters entirely — risked mass digital disenfranchisement. Mr. Krebs made it his personal mission to see to it that every last registration database was sealed up.

When Mr. Trump called mail-in voting a “fraud” in his televised debate with Mr. Biden, now the president-elect, in September, Mr. Krebs contradicted the president at every turn, again without mentioning his name.

“We’ve got a lot of confidence that the ballot’s as secure as it’s ever been,” Mr. Krebs told any reporter who asked.

On Election Day, Mr. Krebs and senior officials held briefings with reporters every few hours to apprise them of any threats. Chad Wolf, the secretary of homeland security, a Trump loyalist and Mr. Krebs’s boss, even appeared at one to praise Mr. Krebs’s work. Despite small hiccups, Mr. Krebs reassured journalists that there was no major foreign interference or signs of systemic fraud.

“It’s just another Tuesday on the internet,” he said.

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The FBI’s decades-long fight against industrial espionage hasn’t really worked – MIT Technology Review

The FBI’s decades-long fight against industrial espionage hasn’t really worked  MIT Technology Review
“china espionage” – read more