California metropolis warns of knowledge breach after ransomware assault claims

A metropolis in California warned residents this week that their knowledge was accessed by hackers who had been in authorities techniques for greater than a month.

Officers in Victorville — a metropolis of about 135,000 residents two hours northeast from Los Angeles — despatched out breach notification letters to individuals warning that hackers had been of their techniques from August 12 to September 26.

“We reviewed the information that had been accessed and decided that a number of file(s) contained your title and a number of of the next: Social Safety quantity; driver’s license quantity or state identification card quantity; medical info, and medical health insurance coverage quantity,” town stated.

They’re providing victims one 12 months of identification safety companies. Metropolis officers didn’t reply to requests for remark in regards to the specifics of the incident, however on September 25, they wrote on Fb that they had been coping with outages affecting telephone and web site techniques.

“This impacts our on-line invoice pay web site and on-line kind submittals. No late charges or utility shutoffs can be assessed whereas the system is down. We apologize for the inconvenience as we work to resolve these points. In case you want help, we’ve got arrange quite a few short-term service traces to obtain all inquiries,” they stated, urging metropolis residents to pay payments in particular person if attainable.

Town stated it was in a position to restore telephone and web site companies on October 3 however that web-based techniques had been nonetheless not functioning. They by no means supplied one other replace on the scenario.

On Tuesday, the NoEscape ransomware gang added town to its listing of victims, claiming it stole 200GB of knowledge from authorities techniques.

Victorville is positioned in San Bernardino County, which handled its personal ransomware assault in April.

Town of #Victorville (@cityofvv) in #California, , has been reportedly #hacked by #NoEscape #ransomware group… pic.twitter.com/uydUB5vtZD

— BetterCyber (@_bettercyber_) October 24, 2023

The assault on Victorville is the newest in a spate of assaults concentrating on cities throughout California this 12 months. Oakland, San Francisco, El Cerrito, Modesto and Hayward have all handled devastating ransomware assaults that restricted authorities companies for weeks and precipitated a spread of points for native residents.

The NoEscape ransomware gang emerged in Might and has pulled off a collection of high-profile assaults on distinguished establishments. Final month the group attacked the group tasked with managing the lake and river techniques alongside the border between the U.S. and Canada.

NoEscape hackers have taken credit score for assaults on Germany’s bar affiliation and Hawaiʻi Group School in addition to Australian firms, a hospital in Belgium, a producing firm within the US and one other manufacturing firm within the Netherlands.