Posted on 05/13/2016 7:30:01 PM PDT by Lorianne
The House is under attack by hackers hoping to infiltrate congressional computers, encrypt their contents, and then force users to pay a ransom to get their access back.
“In the past 48 hours, the House Information Security Office has seen an increase of attacks on the House Network using third party, web-based mail applications such as YahooMail, Gmail,” the House’s Technology Service Desk wrote in an email to House staffers on April 30.
According to the email obtained by The Intercept, the hacked emails impersonate familiar people and invite staffers to download an attachment laced with malware — what’s known as a “phishing” attack.
“When a user clicks on the link in the attack email, the malware encrypts all files on that computer, including shared files, making them unusable until a ‘ransom’ is paid,” the email said.
But House administrative offices refused to say how many if any attacks have been successful, what sort of data may have been affected, or how much has been paid in ransom, if anything.
“The potential for ransomware attacks the House faces is similar to any large organization,” a spokesman for the Chief Administrative Officer of the House wrote in a statement to The Intercept. “The House recognizes the importance of taking steps to employ a cyber security plan to protect our infrastructure, and we constantly work to improve training and education for all House users.”
A lockdown on parts of the House internet network — from Wi-Fi to Ethernet — remains ongoing.
(Excerpt) Read more at theintercept.com ...
Bump
Reading between the lines...
House members and their staff are browsing the internet for porn, bootleg music, and movies.
That was my first thought exactly.
Crooked congress folks are sweating it. And if they are it also shows they’re stupid for putting stuff on computer that shouldn’t be on there.
I knew of a former cop who put child porn on his cop furnished computer. How dumb is that?
hey maybe they could hold Obama’s birth records for ransom...
Even the IT departments are incompetent. Does nothing work anymore in this government?
I think it is time to bring in the CIA for wet work. A call to Mr. Clarke might get the solution going.
Sounds like an issue ready-made for Trump.
Nah, we get them all the time. You just have to pray your users aren’t idiots
For some reason, tax collection seems to work well.
Collection, maybe.
Refunds...Not so good.
Startling Report Of IRS Tax Refund Frauds -- Including Inside Jobs
>For some reason, tax collection seems to work well.
Don’t forget about the justice system...90% ‘win’ rate. Course, that’s against the Citizens. Rarely will you note one from prominence/connected/etc.; let alone the same sentence (see Rangel, Sharpton, Clinton). I guess I should have said ‘one from the (D) plantation’.
The hackers have already exfiltrated copies of all the files they wanted. Now they are going to extort money from the clueless users by encrypting the users’ copies of the files.
I seriously don’t care. Eff them all. What difference does it make?
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