Tag Archive for: sacramento

Prominent Sacramento law firm sues for $1 million after falling prey to ransomware attack


A prominent Sacramento law firm that represents police officers and sheriff’s deputies in the capital region is suing a computer firm for more than $1 million alleging that, after hiring the company to provide cybersecurity, the law firm was hit with a ransomware attack.

The Mastagni Holstedt law firm filed the suit in Sacramento Superior Court this week against Lantech LLC, claiming that because of the cyberattack last year, Mastagni Holstedt was forced to pay a ransom to regain access to its data.

An office manager at Lantech who would not give her name Wednesday morning declined to comment when reached by phone, saying she knew nothing about the suit, which names Lantech, former Lantech owner Terry Berg and backup computer data storage company Acronis Inc.

Lantech did not respond to a subsequent email request for comment, and Acronis denied any responsibility for the cyberattack.

Law firm founder Davis Mastagni also did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit alleges the attack came from a group known as “Black Basta,” a Russian-speaking group first detected in early 2022 that has been blamed for hundreds of ransomware attacks that have resulted in payments of more than $100 million by firms seeking to retrieve data.

“In its first two weeks alone, at least 20 victims were posted to its leak site, a Tor site known as Basta News,” according to a March 2023 “threat profile” by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Information Security. “It exclusively targets large organizations in the construction and manufacturing industries, but was also observed to target other critical infrastructure, including the health and public health sector.

“While primarily targeting organizations within the United States, its operators also expressed interest in attacking other English-speaking countries’ organizations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Threat actors that used the ransomware have additionally impacted organizations based in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, and the Netherlands.”

The group has extorted at least $107 million in bitcoin from targets, according to a November report by Reuters news…

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CYBER SECURITY MARCH 2020



Tax hikes are back on the agenda in Sacramento – Daily Breeze


With 1 million signatures in and several potential challengers, the recall drive against Gov. Gavin Newsom may be causing him to reconsider some of his more progressive policy positions. In his recently unveiled $4.5-billion stimulus program, he offered — get this — tax relief, not tax hikes.

The so-called “Equitable Recovery for California Businesses and Jobs” plan includes $575 million for small business grants, $777.5 million in tax credits to businesses that hire or retain employees, some sales-tax exemptions and $600 checks to low-income Californians.

Of course, it also contains the usual slop like $1.5 billion in subsidies to buy electric vehicles but, nonetheless, we take victories where we can get them in Taxifornia.

Newsom’s September pledge to oppose new taxes was fairly explicit: “In a global, mobile economy, now is not the time for the kind of state tax increases on income we saw proposed at the end of this legislative session and I will not sign such proposals into law.” The irony is not lost on us that the governor said this while also endorsing Prop. 15, the failed $12 billion tax hike — and latest attempt at gutting Proposition 13 — on the November ballot. But his remarks did provide a bit of assurance to the state’s job creators.

On the other hand, there is no such hesitancy to push tax increases in the California Legislature. Proposing a “tax increase du jour” is in the DNA of Democratic legislators. Here are just a few of the bills causing anxiety among those Californians who want to keep at least some of the money they earn.

Assembly Bill 65 by Assemblyman Evan Low would create a California Universal Basic Income. It is like AB2712 presented last legislative session, which proposed to raise the necessary money either through a value-added tax, raising corporate taxes or implementing a tax on services.

Assembly Bill 71 by Assembly members Luz Rivas and David Chiu creates a $2.4 billion homeless fund. The devil’s in the details, however, and the bill suggests the money could come from increases in income tax rates on individuals making over $1 million, increasing corporate income taxes, and collecting taxes on increases in the value of…

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Kaiser says data breach exposed information on nearly 1,000 Sacramento-area patients – Sacramento Bee

Kaiser says data breach exposed information on nearly 1,000 Sacramento-area patients  Sacramento Bee
“data breach” – read more