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Ransomware Compromises San Francisco's Mass Transit System (cbslocal.com)
Buses and light rail cars make San Francisco's "Muni" fleet the seventh largest mass transit system in America. But yesterday its arrival-time screens just displayed the message "You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted" -- and all the rides were free, according to a local CBS report shared by RAYinNYC:
Inside sources say the system has been hacked for days. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has officially confirmed the hack, but says it has not affected any service... The hack affects employees, as well. According to sources, SFMTA workers are not sure if they will get paid this week. Cyber attackers also hit Muni's email systems.
Though the article claims "The transit agency has no idea who is behind it, or what the hackers are demanding in return," Business Insider reports "The attack seems to be an example of ransomware, where a computer system is taken over and the users are locked out until a certain amount of money is sent to the attacker." In addition, they're reporting the attack "reportedly included an email address where Muni officials could ask for the key to unlock its systems."
One San Francisco local told CBS, "I think it is terrifying. I really do I think if they can start doing this here, we're not safe anywhere."
Though the article claims "The transit agency has no idea who is behind it, or what the hackers are demanding in return," Business Insider reports "The attack seems to be an example of ransomware, where a computer system is taken over and the users are locked out until a certain amount of money is sent to the attacker." In addition, they're reporting the attack "reportedly included an email address where Muni officials could ask for the key to unlock its systems."
One San Francisco local told CBS, "I think it is terrifying. I really do I think if they can start doing this here, we're not safe anywhere."
You still have to pay for buses.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
There goes the neighborhood...
Its high time these russian attacks on the US gets stopped.
The election, infrastructure, whats next?
...I don't mean running everything on OpenBSD literally, though it's an idea. I mean, "when do we get really serious about security?" Again and again, we find major hacks that are not the result of super-hackers defeating valiant protective efforts, it's script kiddies defeating idiots who kind of deserved it. The Sony hack came with many stories of multiple executives demanding the network be multiply-holed so that they could watch their favourite videos or whatever, hit their favourite sites.
I'm reading Andrew Ginter's book on SCADA security right now and reflecting on the insanity that there are SCADA systems, of all programming, being written on Windows, at all. There's one place the OpenBSD suggestion is quite serious. But even "OpenBSD" is just a buzzword unless you run your operations with security on your mind at all times. Schnier reduces this "mindfulness" argument to "read your logs", said it in three words.
Most of this stuff is not actually that *hard*...it requires *diligence* and *discipline*, but not nuclear science.
*diligence* and *discipline* cost money.
The Corporate Mantra is "But that costs money. The stockholders wouldn't like it."
Add in "But nothing bad can happen, so why waste money on it." and you have a recipe for the PG&E pipe explosion, Fukushima Daiichi, American Airlines Flight 191, and on and on and on,,,,
Hospitals, schools and transportation. Clearly attacks on infrastructure and public safety - an act of terrorism. Track down, capture and lock up these assholes.
disclosure: i worked as a contractor for LA Metro.
its arrival-time screens just displayed the message "You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted"
not a hard feat to pull off. the data thats shown on these screens is either dynamically generated by track signal data thats processed through SCADA and into a windows system, or you can issue an override screen for construction/etc...removing this screen should not be hard.
and all the rides were free
there is no magic button to make all rides free centrally. This was likely done by Muni as a last ditch effort because their card transaction databases were offline or the system that handles accounting for this database was offline due to the hack. Muni simply put their turnstiles into bypass mode and sent their fare enforcement officers home for the day. it means when they run their fare-jump report for the month, theyll have to adjust for the days they had open fare points.
"The transit agency has no idea who is behind it, or what the hackers are demanding in return,"
nothing. chances are great they didnt expect to get this far. its possible the warning on muni transit screens is a side-effect of a wallpaper or start screen that machines are now forced into depending on what model of annunciation system they purchased. if thats the case, reimaging the screens will take 2-3 hours and can all be done centrally. as for the accounting database for oyster/muni cards, thats an easy restore from backup or calling transactions back from their VAN provider (value added networks, generally operated by IBM or Cisco.)
as for people worrying about getting paid, this happens a lot. ive once shut down live map systems on a handful of busses to upgrade the video drivers, and by the end of the day there was a rumor spreading that the payroll department was hacked. Drivers/operators are not brilliant minds.
Good people go to bed earlier.
using that Microsoft garbage? The city hates us so they shove it down our throats. I hate having to use it here at work, but the article is wrong about affecting email. I was just able to login at mail.sfmta.com. They can't get their lies straight. They lie. And now they say Microsoft is most likely going to prevent us from getting a paycheck. Why have no Microsoft execs going to jail yet for this? They are stealing from us.
Linux got hacked again.
The main reason to use Linux is for cutting costs, which usually goes hand-in-hand with cutting corners.
I don't know about you but if the hack is giving me free bus rides, I feel far from unsafe.
I pay taxes ***OUT THE FUCKING NOSE*** in San Francisco, so the idea of **PAYING** for **PUBLIC** transportation is anathema to me.
I've been riding free for the past two days and I **salute the persons responsible for this***.
I don't endorse this sort of thing but all your IT people told you it was going to happen.
They told you the the days of living with buggy security and security through obscurity are over and that you needed to replace your equipment/system/infrastructure (which would have cost a lot of money) and you didn't do it.
I guarantee you at least one person quit or was fired.
Voila.. you get what you paid for.
BART gets pranked.
Perhaps these organizations should have a backup infrastructure, stored off site, non-accessible from the original system until the correct physical credentials are presented, usable with smartphones and tablets, and with the data required to continue business immediately. Purge the old system, rebuilt it physically and bring back the system with the associated planned and tested procedure. This should be useful for some other catastrophic scenarios as well. After all, if our house burns down, we can live in a hotel or in an emergency shelter for a while.
get everything off the net for starters including vpns.. even that doesn't prevent airgaps from being bridged but its a good start.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Hook the fare metering computers to the deadman's switch on the ICBM launch system. That way if the pesky russians hack our subway fare system, the nukes launch. They won't do that more than once!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Even beyond that, systems that can be so completely broken are typically fragile systems, systems that break in ordinary use. As an example, here's a standard SQL injection, which was present all through a system I worked on recently:
SET lastname='$FORM_LASTNAME'
Sure that can be leveraged by an attacker, but what happens when the user's last name is O'Reilly? O'Reilly can't sign up for the service.
That example is typical. Code that's easily hacked is fragile, poor quality code in general, in most cases. Fixing security isn't JUST fixing security. Code that can't be broken is code that doesn't break.
Which crypto-currency will they use?
I'm thinking Bitcoin.
----
If you stop crypto-currency, you stop ransomware.
Unfortunately all the major US banks are planning to adopt it.
Good luck America!
Oh, I forgot Trump will fix everything. LOL
Ubisoft viral marketing for Watch Dogs 2 I guess? I'd prefer they actually do that Cowboy Bebop ripoff game.
I don't care how clever you all think you are, you cannot design a system that cannot be hacked.
We've gone far too far, hooking up control and command to the internet. We did it to fire people and save money, or at least divert the money once given to ticket takers to computer companies.
So, this is what the future is.
Isn't this the place that arrested its systems administrator because he wanted to keep the system password secret?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
In Russia, buses are thrown under the hacker!
In other words: all your buses are belong to us!
If they had the typical 1 bitcoin would have been aid by now.
But they know what they have now and 1000 bit coins may not do.
If you've seen Black Mirror: Shut Up and Dance (on Netflix,) you'd take the cue that a ransom doesn't prevent them from stealing or destroying the data anyway after you paid or do whatever the blackhats want.
This is the thing about cybercrime, either you stay on top of security updates, or you keep years of backups in case whatever destroys your data does so anyway. Never pay the ransom.
In regards to Black Mirror, if someone steals your nudes, or whatever. Live with the consequences. If you're paranoid that someone might use your gadgets against you, a piece of electrical tape covers the camera. You should wipe out the OS and install a clean OS every year. It's just such a pain in the ass to reinstall software that this isn't done frequently enough. There are reasons why people hang on to old software like Adobe CS3/CS4/CS5 because it's such a pain in the ass to migrate the license if the machine dies.
For a transit system. These systems all run Windows XP. It's game over for XP, either create a Linux Distro based on RHEL, or build your own RTOS.
"All your bus are belong to us"
When the secretary of state is allowed to have a private email server located in someone's closet across the country, and not only do no consequences arise but much of the computer industry says that is perfectly fine - at that point how can you possibly think that anyone will take computer security seriously from that point on?
I am not saying this to troll; I am saying this is the gloomy reality of the situation, and I have given up on the computer industry as a whole taking security seriously.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You're not safe from Mormons
Read "A Study in Scarlet".
Mormons are just as evil as any other Jihadist religion, worse!. They should be thrown out of the country! Some religions actually should be banned. Mr. Trump, do your job. The Muslims are comparative pissants.
disclosure: i worked as a contractor for LA Metro
What platform does the backend system run on. What desktop application is used to access the backend system?
All it takes is one moron to click a phishing email link, executing the malware. Apparently, someone with privileges clicked the link. As in someone with enough access to production systems to infect the entire network. An IT worker got infected and using that IT workers user account the entire system was infected.
This is why those who are serious about security do annoying things like make IT workers use a different account with admin privileges that cannot actually be logged on directly but can execute processes with privilege. Needing to checkout a new password for that account daily and logging all usage of that account. Also removing local admin rights from the IT workers primary logon account. Because outsourced and low paid staff are morons. You know who gets infected the most in corporate America? It's those H1B1 Visa workers who can't afford their own computers so they take the work laptop home and surf sites back in India and Pakistan where many systems are infected.
Serious security means many layers of protection, deep packet analysis, cloud proxy that can decrypt SSL, endpoint analysis, etc., etc. Disaster Recovery is very important, there needs to be a DR SAN/NAS that is mirrored and switchable. Once you get the infection under control and confirm no more ransomware is spreading you flip from production to DR and thereby recover your data instantly. Backup critical systems as well. All this is not enough if you don't train your employees to not do stupid things like click phishing emails, download unapproved software, plug in a USB drive found in the parking lot, and give their password to a total stranger for a chocolate bar.
"Detected as Ransom_HDDCRYPTOR.A, HDDCryptor not only targets resources in network shares such as drives, folders, files, printers, and serial ports via Server Message Block (SMB), but also locks the drive" link
The Hurd.
When will this world ever learn that you just don't rely on one system. You have a backup system, consisting of paper, people, and phones. Our single dependency on the Web is showing again!!
--One San Francisco local told CBS, "I think it is terrifying. I really do I think if they can start doing this here, we're not safe anywhere."
Yes, precious snowflake, even your progressive city by the bay isn't immune. Why, this sort of thing should only happens in Hillbilly towns!
I actually agree. If it was written "Your hacked" though I wouldn't be so sure.
I guess multiple un-infected backups would be asking for too much? Couldn't you just back up x days until a version was found with out the lock in place?
What platform does the backend system run on. What desktop application is used to access the backend system?
None of your business.
Not trying to push security thru obscurity -but you do not have the need to know. Need to know is simply a layer in the security paradigm.