Sources have told me that the City of Pensacola has been hit with another ransomware attack. Officially, city officials have only admitted they are “investigating a potential computer network security incident.”
Good afternoon.
The City of Pensacola is investigating a potential computer network security incident. Currently, city phones are out but police and fire non-emergency numbers are working, as is 911.
Additionally, there are no flight delays at Pensacola International Airport due to this potential incident.
We will not be commenting further on this as we are still investigating.
Sent from my iPhone
Jason Wheeler
Public Information/Strategic Communications Officer
Dig Deeper: In December 2019, Mayor Grover Robinson’s administration had to deal with Maze ransomware. Affected systems in Pensacola included public emails and phone numbers, along with online payments, but police, fire and airport systems remained unchanged.
Mayor Robinson shared few details at the time but said no ransom had been paid and that the city was able to recover thanks to sufficient backups of data.
The city offered LifeLock identity protection services to 57,000 residents, customers and businesses who may have had sensitive data compromised as a result of the municipal cyber attack should expect to be hearing from the city soon.
–Feature Photo Licensed under the Unsplash+ License
Sigh.
I just looked for but couldn’t find a post from a few months ago where I responded to Mayor Reeves’ remarks about smart lights and conspiracies surrounding them…I think it was your reporting on a weekly presser, Rick.
My comment then was that it is certainly no conspiracy that those technologies are rife with security insufficiencies and built-in back doors, depending upon the supplier and sub contractors, and that hopefuly whoever was heading that installation wasn’t the person who oversaw the previous attack through the security cams at City Hall.
This truly isn’t to pick on Mayor Reeves or the City of Pensacola in particular. As with so many areas of the country (and across the globe), this area’s governing bodies have GOT to stop focusing on the sparkly tech whiz bangs and start adequately investing in getting their systems secured instead.
It’s no easy feat these days. The black hats are always going to have more inspiration to get up and get to it in the morning than the white hats, until the policy and decision makers start recognizing that this stuff is no joke and will only continue until the people who hold the purse strings and personnel decisions get invested in understanding what they are actually up against.
Contrary to misguided beliefs, these attacks are not a crap shoot. Whatever it takes, hopefully Mayor Reeves will really get his arms around the seriousness of these security challenges, and start thinking more strategically in terms of keeping systems safe before adding more questionable tech with potentially unknown or unacknowledged security risks–and that out of the box, even before the RFP goes out the door for the install (if the City is even in charge of choosing per the contract).
Secure tech is really expensive and maddeningly difficult. Dealing with the fallout from tech breeches is worse. Ransoms don’t just knock off because they’ve already scored a couple of times at a particular location…Russia’s gotta pay for its war somehow.