Tag Archive for: Mark

Mark Warner calls for improved cyber defenses to protect schools

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After high-profile ransomware attacks this year, Senator Mark Warner and Senator Susan Collins have called for school districts to improve cyber defenses.

WASHINGTON — WSSC Water, which serves almost 2 million residents in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, announced on Friday that it was a victim of a ransomware attack in late May that targeted “non-essential business systems.”

The cyberattack occurred on May 24 but the company said drinking water and wastewater systems were not impacted or ever at risk.

In a statement, WSSC Water Police and Homeland Security Director David McDonough said the virus was successfully removed and the company did not pay any ransom to the hackers.

“These attacks have become more common, especially in recent weeks, and WSSC Water has prepared for this type of event,” he wrote.

The company added that files were restored from back-ups and there was no significant impact on business operations, however, some customers may be notified about potential breaches.

“While the virus was not successful, it appears the ransomware criminals did gain access to internal files,” the statement read. “As the investigation continues, WSSC Water will notify in writing any individuals whose personal identifying information was exposed. Those individuals will be offered five years of credit monitoring with $1,000,000 in identity theft insurance at no cost to them.”

The announcement of the WSSC Water cyberattack came after highly publicized breaches against Colonial Pipeline and JBS Holdings earlier this year.

Both companies were forced to pay millions of dollars to the hackers to get control of their systems back.

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Scripps ransomware shutdown hits the two-week mark

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As Scripps Health reaches the two-week mark in its ongoing ransomware outage, the “will be back soon” message posted on its website is beginning to look more than a little optimistic.

Though a company spokesman said the health system had nothing new to report on the situation Friday, employees who said they wished to remain anonymous to avoid losing their jobs, confirmed that critical electronic medical records systems remained offline, continuing to force paper documentation and slowing down the pace of care, especially in emergency departments.

Two independent individuals privy to the current situation inside Scripps said that a decision was made Friday to once again divert stroke, trauma and heart attack cases from Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla due to concerns over a recent influx of emergency patients at the facility, one of the largest in San Diego.

“I cannot stress this enough, every minute we are there we feel like we are playing with our license,” one nurse said, adding that many have been advising their own family members to stay away. “We are all buying malpractice insurance at this time.”

Regulators, so far, have not expressed similar concerns. In an email sent Friday afternoon, the California Department of Public Health said it “continues to monitor” Scripps facilities, adding that they “are operational and caring for patients using appropriate contingency protocols.”

Patients continue to give mixed reviews of how their care is being influenced by such a long-running cyber attack.

Steve Bernitz of Encinitas said he has been a Scripps spine surgery patient for six years and currently has two ruptured discs in his back that will likely require surgery.

Simply getting Scripps to acknowledge that he was its patient, despite the fact that he has been in “great pain” for the past 10 days, he said, has been nearly impossible.

“They won’t take appointments, they won’t answer any questions about what is happening or when they might re-open, aren’t referring people to outside doctors, and will not even allow their doctors to speak with their patients via telephone as they say they cannot do that without a functioning medical records system,”…

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Video: Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner Opening Remarks at Hearing on the Hack of U.S. Networks by a Foreign Adversary

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From Sen. Mark Warner’s office…you can watch the video here.

Below are Chairman Warner’s opening remarks as prepared for delivery:

First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome our two new Members, Senators Casey and Gillibrand, to the Committee. I look forward to working with you, and all of our Members, in the bipartisan tradition of this Committee. 

The Intelligence Committee’s record of working together in the interest of America’s national security has been due, in no small part, to the tireless efforts of our former Chairman, Senator Burr, and our new Vice Chairman, Senator Rubio.  So I want to take this opportunity during my first hearing as Chairman to thank you both for your partnership. I am confident we will be able to keep working together in a bipartisan way in the 117th Congress.

I would like to welcome our witnesses today: 

  • Kevin Mandia, CEO of FireEye;
  • Sudhakar Ramakrishna, President and CEO of SolarWinds;
  • Brad Smith, President of Microsoft; and
  • George Kurtz, President and CEO of CrowdStrike.  

We also invited a representative from Amazon Web Services to join us today, but unfortunately, they declined.  

Today’s hearing is on the widespread compromise of public and private computer networks in the United States by a foreign adversary, colloquially called the “SolarWinds Hack.”  But while most infections appear to have been caused by a trojanized update of SolarWinds’ Orion software, further investigation has revealed additional victims who do not use SolarWinds tools. It has become clear that there is much more to learn about this incident, its causes, its scope and scale, and where we go from here. 

This is the second hearing we’ve held on this topic.  Our first was a closed hearing on January 6th with the government agencies responding to this incident.  It is going to take the combined power of both the public and private sector to understand and respond to what happened.

Preliminary indications suggest that the scope and scale of this incident are beyond any that we’ve confronted as a nation, and its implications are significant.  Even though what we’ve seen so far indicates this was…

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