Wisconsin county coping with ransomware assault on public well being division

A county in Wisconsin is responding to a ransomware assault that focused its public well being division and compelled officers to take some techniques offline.

Officers in Rock County, Wisconsin informed Recorded Future Information that they skilled a cyberattack on September 29 that affected a number of of their laptop techniques.

The assault focused the Rock County Public Well being Division – which serves greater than 160,000 folks throughout 25 cities, villages and cities within the space. The county is about an hour away from each Madison and Milwaukee.

“We responded rapidly to this incident by taking techniques down to stop additional affect and are working with third-party specialists to securely deliver our techniques again on-line as rapidly as attainable,” County Administrator Josh Smith stated.

“Since some techniques aren’t but totally operational, this may increasingly briefly affect sure County operations. Nevertheless, the general public ought to expertise minimal service disruption right now. We’re investigating the total nature and scope of this occasion, in addition to its affect to any information in our techniques.”

Smith added that they’re working to completely restore the system and can present updates to native residents as they progress.

The assault was claimed by the Cuba ransomware gang on Tuesday. The gang, which has no relation to the nation, didn’t say how a lot information was stolen however stated the data included monetary paperwork, tax info and extra.

Researchers at Google and Ukraine’s Laptop Emergency Response Group imagine that the criminals behind the ransomware could also be linked to the Russian state, as they’ve been seen focusing on authorities techniques in Ukraine and Montenegro.

In November 2022, the FBI and different U.S. companies stated the group launched assaults in opposition to 100 organizations all over the world and introduced in $60 million.

Municipalities in Wisconsin have confronted a barrage of assaults during the last 12 months. Ransomware hackers shut down a faculty district serving almost 20,000 college students one 12 months in the past and triggered a “catastrophic software program failure” in Langlade County in July. That assault, by the LockBit ransomware gang, crippled the county’s sheriff’s workplace and compelled 911 calls to be rerouted.

Along with ransomware, Wisconsin’s state courtroom system was hit with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assault in March that triggered points.