North Carolina's water and sewer service suffers cyber attack
On October 15, 2018, the CEO of Onslow Water and Sewer Authority (ONWASA), Jeffrey Hudson, reported that one of his employees in the IT department had discovered in the early hours of October 4, 2018, a sophisticated ransomware attack affecting their systems and, although he proceeded to disconnect the systems from the Internet, by then the virus had already spread.
The used virus was Emotet, a polymorphic banking trojan that spreads through a spam botnet whose main function is to download and launch other types of malware, in this case a ransomware type called Ryuk.
According to the company, their customers' information has not been compromised, but they do report that they have had to restore several databases that had been encrypted. Water and wastewater service has never been interrupted.
References:
- 15/10/2018 onwasa.com ONWASA – Media release
- 15/10/2018 cyberscoop.com Ransomware hits computer networks of North Carolina water utility
- 15/10/2018 cbs17.com Hackers hit NC utility with ransomware attack
- 16/10/2018 darkreading.com NC Water Utility Fights Post-Hurricane Ransomware
- 16/10/2018 unaaldia.hispasec.com El FBI investiga ataque al servicio de aguas y alcantarillado de North Carolina