back to article Insult to injury: Malware menace soaks water-logged utility ravaged by Hurricane Florence

A water company in the US state of North Carolina already dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Florence will now have to juggle a complete database rebuild – thanks to a nasty ransomware infection. The Onslow Water and Sewer Authority (aka ONWASA) says it will have to completely restore a number of its internal systems …

  1. Mark 85

    If it weren't for bad luck

    this company wouldn't have any luck at all. I feel for the techs and the rest of the workers for this double whammy.

  2. Christoph

    "for the next several weeks as it restores all of the damaged systems"

    Aren't they lucky they're not in Puerto Rico.

  3. MiguelC Silver badge

    Good on them for not paying ransom!

    That's all.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I run a mail server on the Gulf coast

    Whenever there is a weather event nearby I see a dramatic increase in the number of login attempts and viral and ransomware payloads - they generally start a few days prior to the weather arriving and continue throughout the storm. Once the storm has passed they drop back to normal - while Michael was in the gulf our sales and accounting departments received tons of urgent_invoice.pdf.iso, overdue.doc and urgent_quote_needed.doc.exe files. I stop them all at the server.

  5. Bluto Nash

    Who with enough access had the lack of forethought to actually fall for and/or trigger whatever ransomware vector was triggered? Shouldn't the sysadmins or those with that level of access be far more resistant to this sort of attack? Assuming it came through the normal vectors of email, etc., that seem to be in vogue nowadays. Users should only be able to fsck their own files, not traverse multiple databases with the ability to wipe this stuff out.

    1. MJB7

      Re: who triggered it?

      The sysadmins *should* be more resistant to these sort of attacks, but as they are actually humans (appearances to the contrary notwithstanding), they will still trigger the ransomware some of the time ... and we never get to hear about the cases that they didn't.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm not that stupid

    but I'm ignorant, OK? and embarrassed

    so anonymous question.

    Would this have affected them if they ran Linux? If not, and Emotet only affects Windows, then, with all pain and respect, I say they nobody but themselves to blame...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I'm not that stupid

      Would this have affected them if they ran Linux?

      Probably not. Not because Linux has no vulnerabilities, but because the crims go after the volume targets that are Windows and X86 architectures, with plenty of freely available attack tools and unfixed-yet-known vulnerabilities, not to mention the ease of accessing administrator capabilities from within Windows applications.

      However, Linux does have flaws, and a state-sponsored attack would have the resources available to find and exploit any Linux flaws now. If corporate systems saw a notable uptick in Linux adoption, the everyday crims would start looking for means to attacking those systems.

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