Silver State Goes Dark as Cyberattack Knocks Nevada Websites Offline (theregister.com) 19
Nevada has been crippled by a cyberattack that began on August 24, taking down state websites, intermittently disabling phone lines, and forcing offices like the DMV to close. The Register reports: The Office of Governor Joseph Lombardo announced the attack via social media on Monday, saying that a "network security incident" took hold in the early hours of August 24. Official state websites remain unavailable, and Lombardo's office warned that phone lines will be intermittently down, although emergency services lines remain operational. State offices are also closed until further notice, including Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) buildings. The state said any missed appointments will be honored on a walk-in basis.
"The Office of the Governor and Governor's Technology Office (GTO) are working continuously with state, local, tribal, and federal partners to restore services safely," the announcement read. "GTO is using temporary routing and operational workarounds to maintain public access where it is feasible. Additionally, GTO is validating systems before returning them to normal operation and sharing updates as needed." Local media outlets are reporting that, further to the original announcement, state offices will remain closed on Tuesday after officials previously expected them to reopen. The state's new cybersecurity office says there is currently no evidence to suggest that any Nevadans' personal information was compromised during the attack.
"The Office of the Governor and Governor's Technology Office (GTO) are working continuously with state, local, tribal, and federal partners to restore services safely," the announcement read. "GTO is using temporary routing and operational workarounds to maintain public access where it is feasible. Additionally, GTO is validating systems before returning them to normal operation and sharing updates as needed." Local media outlets are reporting that, further to the original announcement, state offices will remain closed on Tuesday after officials previously expected them to reopen. The state's new cybersecurity office says there is currently no evidence to suggest that any Nevadans' personal information was compromised during the attack.
'No evidence' is not encouraging (Score:4, Insightful)
'The state's new cybersecurity office says there is currently no evidence to suggest that any Nevadans' personal information was compromised during the attack.'
Read that again... no actual certainty there, despite the attempt at spin. Or am I missing something?
Re: (Score:2)
Read that again... no actual certainty there, despite the attempt at spin. Or am I missing something?
Motives? Could be missing motives. I'm curious what would be the motivation to attack computers for a state DMV office. I have doubts there's a lot of money that could be taken this way, or rather if this is to take names for committing some kind of ID fraud to make money that there's likely better places to target. There's public databases full of names and addresses, such as county property records, various databases for business licenses, and so on that would give people much the same information tha
Re:'No evidence' is not encouraging (Score:4)
In my mind an attack on any government computer system is most often a distraction and/or just making trouble for a government so as to harass and cost them money. By that I mean this is more likely the actions of a state actor, or some proxy that's funded by some state actor, than the actions of a domestic criminal looking to rip people off.
Foreign actors might cause a minor blip likely to go unnoticed to use in the future. Why DMV? Because with the stupid "Real ID" they can inject documents for their actors on the ground. I've seen at cloud providers foreign actors going absolutely ape shit trying to get into the US budget system. When you know where the money goes, you can figure out a lot of things. But you're correct, likely this is someone that is wanting to piss off government or is looking to hold their systems hostage for ransom.
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But you're correct, likely this is someone that is wanting to piss off government or is looking to hold their systems hostage for ransom.
I didn't intend to imply holding data for ransom but now that you've mentioned it I'm reminded that is a possible motive. I didn't think of the implications of Real ID making the DMV a target for identity theft for state actors. That makes the DMV a place with enough information to create a convincing false passport, or some other documents to enable freedom of travel without suspicion.
As I recall government entities rarely pay out ransom for data. They have more resources than any private entity and so
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Real ID is this [tsa.gov]
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The evidence was deleted :D
It is and always has been insane that all these governments run mostly on Windows.
A lot of them use to use a lot of IBM mainframe stuff behind the scenes, and there's still a fair bit of it around underpinning things, but pretty much all of the new projects are Windows-based.
Just waiting to hear Trumps take on this (Score:2, Funny)
"And this is clearly a sign of how incompetent their Democrat governor is. I'm sending in the National Guard now!!!!! Oh, it's a Republican governor. Well it's clearly evidence of how desperate those Democrats are to rig the next election. They're traitors!!!! and I want them locked up."
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As long as it isn't a hacker group tied to the eretz reich, russia, china or Best Korea, trump will threaten a nukular annihilation of the perps on site.
Otherwise he'll claim it is a Democratic hoax.
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As long as it isn't a hacker group tied to the eretz reich, russia, china or Best Korea, trump will threaten a nukular annihilation of the perps on site.
Otherwise he'll claim it is a Democratic hoax.
It's both a Democratic hoax AND a Democratic attack.
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Yes, that peculiar superposition known as the TDS cognitive dissonance.
NVDA Baseline GIMP Benchmark (Score:2)
Nevada? (Score:1)
And nothing of value was lost . . .
The timing on this... (Score:4, Interesting)
Burning man started Sunday, Monday would have been the first workday.
Nevada put in a draconian law that taxes large festivals and there's only one large festival in Nevada.
I honestly don't think this was a mistake.
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Burning man started Sunday, Monday would have been the first workday.
Nevada put in a draconian law that taxes large festivals and there's only one large festival in Nevada.
I honestly don't think this was a mistake.
They've got to be taxing something. The decline in tourism has to be hurting Nevada (it was in decline before Trump, but the tangerine traitor would have sent that decline into overdrive), I've been told Vegas is a ghost town these days, so they've got to make up the shortfall... They can't tax people or they'll flee the state that offers little else but low tax and they can't tax corporations for... erm... some reasons.
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It depends on their definition of "large". EDC in May in May isn't exactly tiny... The cost to get in to Burning Man is high enough already without the tax bozos hitting them with a large tax bite.
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Nevada put in a draconian law that taxes large festivals and there's only one large festival in Nevada.
What law is that?
Nevada LLC owners might be revealed (Score:2)
This is potentially big, if they stole the names of the real owners and members of Nevada LLCs. When forming a Nevada LLC, you tell the state who you are but that is kept confidential. What is public is your registered agent, but the agent won't publicly say whom they're acting for.
This reminds me of leaks like Mossack Fonseca.
A Wyoming LLC does not need to tell the state the actual owners, only the agent.
Of course, banks and the IRS need to have the actual owners.