US Secret Service agents are looking into an attack affecting Riverside’s computer server, according to state and federal officials who are familiar with this matter.
The federa agency is experienced in defending United States financial institutes from cyber-attack, the Secret Service assists local governments when faced with such attacks.
Kevin Dye, a resident-in-charge for the US Secret service in Dayton says, “As a matter of policy, the Secret Service does not discuss active criminal investigations.”
The city manager said today that, “Another computer virus hit the city of Riverside’s police and fire servers last week and erased certain files.”
This attack is the second to hit the city in several weeks but was less disastrous then the unsolved attack that occurred last month. The previous attack destroyed 10 months of police data by making it inaccessible to the police officials.
City Manager, Mark Carpenter claims that Riverside officials still do not know what happened during the attack. The city officials plan on meeting on May 15 along with the city’s third party information technology company to discuss this problem.
Carpenter said, “We’re still trying to get to the bottom of how the attack was initiated.”
He added saying that the term “ransomware” was used to describe this attack. According to Carpenter, this attack targeted the city’s server Friday afternoon and erased about 8 hours’ worth of data.
Carpenter added saying, “Everything was backed-up, but we lost about eight hours’ worth of information we have to re-enter. It was our police and fire records, so we just re-enter the reports.”
For years the FBI has been warning and condemning the use of ransomware software that may threaten the data or publish it. According to FBI’s website, “Organizations often don’t learn they have been infected until they can’t access their data or until computer messages appear demanding a ransom payment in exchange for a decryption key.”
