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MUNICIPALITIES FACE A CONSTANT BATTLE AS RANSOMWARE SNOWBALLSMUNICIPALITIES FACE
A CONSTANT BATTLE AS RANSOMWARE SNOWBALLS

As record-breaking volumes of ransomware hit cities, towns, and counties this
year, municipalities remain easy targets that pay, and there's no end of the
attacks in sight.

Kristina Beek, Associate Editor, Dark Reading

December 8, 2023

6 Min Read
Source: Jne Valokuvaus via Shutterstock


Municipalities in the United States, and globally, are experiencing a fresh wave
of ransomware attacks, with even big cities like Dallas falling to the gangs'
activities. As this string of cyberattacks continues, it highlights how a
historically unprepared sector remains in desperate need of implementing viable
cybersecurity defenses and solutions.

In a prime example of the trend, on Nov. 7, the Play ransomware gang posted
information it claimed to have stolen from Dallas County in an alleged
ransomware attack, with threats of posting more if the group does not get its
desired payment. On the same day, the county provided a cybersecurity update,
citing an ongoing investigation and collaboration with law enforcement.



"Dallas County is aware of an unauthorized party posting data claimed to be
taken from our systems in connection with our recent cybersecurity incident,"
according to the update. "We are currently in the process of thoroughly
reviewing the data in question to determine its authenticity and potential
impact."




A RECENT HISTORY OF THE RANSOMWARE ATTACKS

Unfortunately, the incident wasn't a one-off — far from it. The potential breach
comes just months after the city of Dallas was hit with a different cyberattack
that affected public services such as 311 calls, libraries, animal shelters,
safety departments, and online payment systems. This instance was not the first
time that the perpetrator, the Royal ransomware group, had attacked the city,
either. 

In another example of the struggle between ransomware groups and municipalities,
Rock County, Wisc., experienced a cyberattack Sept. 29 against its Public Health
Department, compromising its computer systems. The Cuba ransomware gang claimed
responsibility for that attack, and announced that the stolen data included
financial documents and tax information. 



The trend is not just a US issue: On Oct. 30, 70 municipalities in Germany were
affected by a ransomware incident after a service provider had to restrict
access to prevent the spread of malware. And prior to that, schools in Hungary
and Slovakia were victims of attacks by ESXiArgs ransomware. The Florida Supreme
Court, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Rice University were also hit.



"There is an uptick in ransomware attacks across almost all industries and
organization types in the past 12 months," says Erich Kron, security awareness
advocate at KnowBe4, "with record-breaking amounts of ransomware attacks,
financial impact from ransomware, and a variety of ransomware-enabling tools and
ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) providers on the market."  

This assessment is shown by the data: According to a Sophos study on ransomware
attacks, "the rate of ransomware attacks in state and local government has
increased from 58% to 69% year-over-year, contrary to the global cross-sector
trend, which has remained constant at 66% in our 2023 and 2022 surveys."

However, as the threat of ransomware attacks against municipalities remains
high, the security protections for these targets have remained limited.


MUNICIPALITIES MAKE FOR THE PERFECT VICTIM

While threat actor tactics and tools evolve and the volume of their attacks
increases, the data shows that municipalities are falling behind and failing to
rise to the occasion when it comes to protecting themselves. According to the
Sophos study, there are a variety of reasons for that.

For instance, municipalities are notoriously understaffed, underfunded, and
possess little training when it comes to cybersecurity preparation and
mitigation. When ransomware groups seek out their targets, they know that
municipalities will be unprepared to handle their attacks, which will either
lead to success and potential notoriety or, even better, an easy ransom
payment. 



Sophos reported that more than a quarter of state and local government
organizations (28%) in its survey admitted to making a payment of at least $1
million or more when it came to ransoms, a massive increase compared with the 5%
that made that large of a payment in the 2022 data. Of the organizations whose
data was encrypted in an attack, 99% got their information back, with 34%
reporting that they paid a ransom and 75% relying on backups.

Nick Tausek, lead security automation architect at Swimlane, notes that the
local public sector historically has a worse security posture than the federal
government or large corporations. He adds that the public sector also has
"organizational lack of appetite to endure prolonged outage due to public
services, and a lack of automation."

Furthermore, along with tight funding and limited security programs and
staffing, "these commonalities are present in most municipalities at a greater
proportion than the private/federal ecosystem, and combine to make recovery
difficult, and the temptation to pay the ransom to restore functionality more
alluring to the victims," Tausek continues. 

While ransomware groups celebrate their easy wins, municipalities struggle to
bounce back. When Dallas was hit by the ransomware attack that took down its
systems, the city was still trying to make progress in becoming fully
operational even a month later. The only good news is that the city worked with
cybersecurity experts to try to enhance its security posture and take additional
steps after the attack occurred. But these attacks leave lasting effects that
can take extended periods of time to recover from, making municipalities all the
more vulnerable in the meantime.


THE FUTURE OF CYBER SAFETY FOR MUNICIPALITIES



Like Dallas, municipalities will have to start being actively involved in
implementing cybersecurity practices and procedures, according to Daniel Basile,
chief information security officer at Texas A&M System's Shared Service Center.

"In a lot of the cities, unfortunately, there's a one- or two-person IT shop
that's handling the entire county or small city," he says. However, there might
be additional resources to tap. In Texas, for example, Basile notes that
procedures have been established so that the Texas Department of Emergency
Management can assist in emergency situations. 

"We have deployable asset teams across the state of Texas, and special-interest
response teams that can go out and help get things running again," he explains.
"They're obviously not going to bring you whole, but they're going to make it so
that you can do business again for public sector organizations."

Though lack of staffing is an issue that needs to be addressed, Swimlane's
Tausek believes that adding new members to cybersecurity teams won't necessarily
rapidly resolve the difficulty in responding to constant ransomware attacks.

"Simply adding people to the security team is not cost-effective, is not
scalable, is difficult in practice, and is not enough to respond at the modern
scale of threats," he says. "A two-pronged approach of investing in both
automation technology and skilled cybersecurity professionals is the strongest
approach to maintain a healthy security posture."

Ultimately, he says that prevention, while obvious, will always be key. 

"End-user training, vulnerability management, patch management, regular backups,
disaster-recovery drills, and system/network hardening are still the best lines
of defense against ransomware," he notes. By incorporating these into automation
software, it will reduce human error and allow for a quicker response time when
threats arise. 

Municipalities will need to prioritize their limited defensive budgets
strategically, which means "an in-depth analysis of where your threats are,"
according to KnowBe4's Krohn, so that these groups can mitigate these issues on
a scale of what is most pressing and needs attention. 





ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Kristina Beek, Associate Editor, Dark Reading




See more from Kristina Beek, Associate Editor, Dark Reading
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