A regional transit system in California was imperiled by a hacker—or hackers—who deleted 30 million files and took the computer systems down.
“We actually had the hackers get into our system, and systematically start erasing programs and data,” Deputy General Manager Mark Lonergan. Officials have alerted federal agencies.
The hacker demanded a ransom in bitcoin, leaving a message on the website: “I’m sorry to modify the home page, I’m good hacker, I just want to help you fix these vulnerability (sic).”
SacRT said that it managed to get through the hacking without a significant slowdown for riders. No customer or employee identities were compromised, it said.
SacRT didn’t respond to the demand of one bitcoin, which is worth about $8,000.
“We caught it early (Sunday) morning,” chief operating officer Mark Lonergan told the newspaper. “We took all our systems offline” and determined what data had been erased. “We are restoring everything now and bringing it up online.”
The agency was able to trace how the hackers entered the system, he said. “That is how we know no data exited,” he said. “This was about destruction.”
They’ll bring in an outside expert “to review our vulnerabilities and make this less likely to happen again,” Lonergan said.
And while you’re here …
We have a small favor to ask of you. More people are reading NTD TV than ever, but ad revenues are plummeting across media websites. If you can, please share this article on Facebook so you can help NTD. It takes less than a minute. Thank you very much!
Friends Read Free