Blake Dowling
The “Leon Consulate of Florida” was overthrown this week, thanks to the chumps at the Moroccan Islamic Union-Mail.
I suppose they meant Leon County, since this hacking wing of ISIS hasn’t quite mastered English.
What they refer to is the Leon County (North Florida) website; it was indeed hacked for a couple of minutes, replaced with this creepy message:
County officials responded immediately that the attack was only “surface level” and all sensitive data was protected behind a firewall. Perhaps the county needed a little distraction from the FBI-fueled barrage of media coverage over the past couple of weeks. Good job Kim.
If you check out the Facebook page — although I would not recommend it, as the National Security Agency and FBI might be tapping on your door, or you might make a list you would rather not be on — you will see a warning to all that this group is going to be attacking “the most important sites in the world” over the next few days.
So look out Andrew Gillum, Chris Christie, John Morgan and Tmz.com — this means you.
Tighten up those websites. Apply patches, run updates, don’t host sites in an unsecured location etc. Although it appears this particular hack did squat in our Capital City, what happens when one actually wreaks havoc?
In last week’s Petya ransomware attack, a few firms got hit hard.
Reckitt Benckiser (Britain), the maker of Norofen tablets, Durex condoms, and other quality products, are still partially down as of this writing. They got pummeled; manufacturing, shipping, ordering, all disrupted. The global tab for this attack could reach $100 million, the company estimates.
Some firms pay ransom to try and get their data back, but the bitcoin payments were made and (poof) nada.
So, unlike similar recent attacks, this one appears to have launched just to create chaos and digital destruction in a specific area.
We will see a lot of this in the near future as nation-states wish to wage cyberwarfare with one another versus more traditional combat.
Besides Wise Man Kim, no one else seems to want WW3, but if it came down to that, here are the current Top 5 militaries most likely to come out on top.
A local CBS affiliate is about to enter my office for a quick segment about cybersecurity, so allow me to wrap this up with some ways to protect your business or organization from hackers and threats.
Step 1: Strong password.
Step 2: Antivirus and antispam solutions.
Step 3: Firewall.
Step 4: Robust backup.
Step 4: Don’t piss off CNN.
Step 5: Training.
Steps 1 through 4 used to be enough, but people aren’t getting the message. Users are still clicking where they shouldn’t, so they must be trained, followed up by intrusion testing (try this test for your staff).
Next, more training; even then, you won’t be 100 percent protected, but you will minimize risk.
As far as best practices go, that is a good path.
In closing, I hope Wise Kim gets back to his party island and stops with the missile shenanigans, that will only end badly for him and the world.
I hope CNN gets back to broadcasting news, and that no one else gets subpoenaed in Tallahassee for CRA-Gate. We need some good news in our region (like local hero Walter, nice work sir:
That’s it for today, have an awesome weekend.
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Blake Dowling is CEO of Aegis Business Technologies, enjoys the Allman Brothers Band, the writings of Hemingway, and any movie with Pauly Shore. He can be reached at [email protected].
