Oakland declares state of emergency due to ransomware attack
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Re: Oakland declares state of emergency due to ransomware attack
#2This sort of stuff doesn’t surprise me any more. I’ve been on a number of “desktop support” sessions over the last few years and seen some shit. The common denominator seems to be entirely unpatched obsolete stuff (stock RTM windows 7 with stock IE in 2021 was my favourite) where either someone turned the updates off because they knew better or stopped paying their MSP for service immediately after they had been set up and assumed it’d just work forever.
People like that and the associated competence level are rolling out the red carpet.
Re: Oakland declares state of emergency due to ransomware attack
#3This sort of stuff doesn’t surprise me any more. I’ve been on a number of “desktop support” sessions over the last few years and seen some shit. The common denominator seems to be entirely unpatched obsolete stuff (stock RTM windows 7 with stock IE in 2021 was my favourite) where either someone turned the updates off because they knew better or stopped paying their MSP for service immediately after they had been set…
If its really important. Airgap. Or VM-Wrapped with restore points.
I completely understand that somebody does not want to upgrade into the warp-abyss-abomination of modern windows, especially if huge expenses software was written once, that needs backwards compatability or contains sensitive data. You can not use windows if you work for anything with sensitive data.
In todays world the legacy is the good stuff. Just needs protection.
Re: Oakland declares state of emergency due to ransomware attack
#4What crypto are Ransomware asking for these days? After all the Bitcoin mixers seem to be taken offline (have they?). Sorry, I'm kinda out of the loop and was wondering how these thugs were cashing their attacks.
Re: Oakland declares state of emergency due to ransomware attack
#5I don’t get why any user has the ability to cause so much damage. Sure they can lock their own files out and need to restore from backup, but how can that knock out other departments, let alone things like email.
Re: Oakland declares state of emergency due to ransomware attack
#6I don’t get why any user has the ability to cause so much damage. Sure they can lock their own files out and need to restore from backup, but how can that knock out other departments, let alone things like email.
It's not any user, it's a ransomware attack. So it was intentionally done to limit their ability to work. Also, don't assume they had backups, or that these backups weren't also targeted.
Re: Oakland declares state of emergency due to ransomware attack
#7What crypto are Ransomware asking for these days? After all the Bitcoin mixers seem to be taken offline (have they?). Sorry, I'm kinda out of the loop and was wondering how these thugs were cashing their attacks.
Re: Oakland declares state of emergency due to ransomware attack
#8What crypto are Ransomware asking for these days? After all the Bitcoin mixers seem to be taken offline (have they?). Sorry, I'm kinda out of the loop and was wondering how these thugs were cashing their attacks.
Monero https://cointelegraph.com/news/monero-crypto-of-choice-as-ra...
Thanks! That is from 2021; is that still the case?
Re: Oakland declares state of emergency due to ransomware attack
#9This sort of stuff doesn’t surprise me any more. I’ve been on a number of “desktop support” sessions over the last few years and seen some shit. The common denominator seems to be entirely unpatched obsolete stuff (stock RTM windows 7 with stock IE in 2021 was my favourite) where either someone turned the updates off because they knew better or stopped paying their MSP for service immediately after they had been set…
I love people that believe there exists a version of windows that could be deemed secure.
I was there once.
Install the latest update to fix the security problems. Don't worry, our software becomes 300mb larger due to 500 other security problems we are rolling out today, but we managed to close off this one tiny hole over here.
Why does it matter anyways. With both Intel and AMD running processors independent of your machine, there's really no way to keep anything secure unless you use a machine that's over 20 years old.
Re: Oakland declares state of emergency due to ransomware attack
#10I don’t get why any user has the ability to cause so much damage. Sure they can lock their own files out and need to restore from backup, but how can that knock out other departments, let alone things like email.
Security is expensive.