Who’s behind cyberattacks in Kansas, Missouri? Local outages part of national trend
A number of cyberattacks have hit local governments’ networks in Kansas and Missouri in the last two months. The Star spoke to a cybersecurity expert about how they connect to national trends.
In May, Kansas City’s website went offline because of what the city called a computer outage, causing the municipal court to close for three days and KC Water’s online billing to shut down for more than a week. The city has not elaborated on what caused the outage.
Multiple Jackson County offices were down for two weeks in April because of a ransomware attack. Traffic camera system KC Scout might take months to return online after an April attack, officials said.
Wichita city operations ground to a halt when the municipality’s computer system’s were taken hostage in May. An unspecified number of Social Security numbers and payment information were compromised in the Wichita attack.
At least 95 American state and local governments dealt with attacks last year, including the Kansas court system.
Some of the perpetrators of the Kansas and Missouri attacks have taken credit or been identified. Russian hacker group LockBit claimed responsibility for the Wichita attack, while ransomware gang BlackSuit identified themselves after the Jackson County attack. Data that appeared to be from KC Scout was found on a dark website believed to be linked to Russia, cybersecurity threat analyst Brett Callow told The Star’s affiliate The Eagle.
Acting CEO of the National Cybersecurity Center, Greg Oslan, spoke to The Star on national trends surrounding cyberattacks. The nonprofit educates groups, including government officials, on how to keep their systems secure.
What do the attackers want?
This depends on the group or individual. Oslan said there are three types of cyberattacks.
Crimes committed by individual hackers have decreased, since they are easier to catch, according to Oslan. They have been replaced by ransomware groups — who want money from ransoms — and foreign disruptors — who want to destabilize the United States.
Oslan called cyberattacks “death by a thousand paper cuts” for society.
“You hear about it every day, it’s become almost commonplace, but you haven’t really seen it impact you yet” he said. “And, like many things in life, just because it’s not impacting you now does not mean it won’t or couldn’t materially impact you tomorrow.”
Why are governments targeted?
Especially in an election year, hacker groups look for opportunities to wreak havoc on American communities. Oslan said these incidents can range from publishing a nuisance message to shutting off the city’s water supply, which was identified as a risk by the Biden Administration.
A letter from the White House stated, “Drinking water and wastewater systems are an attractive target for cyberattacks because they are a lifeline critical infrastructure sector but often lack the resources and technical capacity to adopt rigorous cybersecurity practices.”
None of the recent Kansas and Missouri attacks interfered with residents getting water.
Organizations with little resources, like schools, small businesses and rural communities, are especially vulnerable to cyberattacks, because they lack money and skilled employees to make their systems secure.
How do cyberattacks happen?
According to Oslan, 90% of cyberattacks are caused by human error, like an employee forgetting to update software or clicking on a link from a deceptive email. The phishing attempts have become more sophisticated, even getting through multi-factor authentication.
“The sophisticated ones are getting in and convincing you to give them your cellphone number so they can send (the notification) to you even though they’re the bad guys,” Oslan said.
How can I prevent an attack?
Here are five suggestions for government employees to help avoid a cyberattack, from the National Cybersecurity Center.
Update software regularly
Create long and unique passwords
Forward suspicious links and messages to IT
Use multi-factor authentication
Back up files and encrypt documents and messages
Have more questions about government in the Kansas City area? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com.
This story was originally published June 3, 2024 at 1:07 PM.
