Hacked
By Mitch Berg
Somebody hacked the City of Saint Paul:
What is it about information technology that makes every level of Minnesota government so very very bad at it?
It would seem Mayor Carter could have diverted some time from setting up college funds and yakking about Universal Basic Income to make sure the city’s patching was up to date and tell city employees to stop answering scam emails.
Speaking of bad ID, Governor Walz called out the 19 year old cooks:
This isn’t the “Hummers patrolling the streets” National Guard. The MN Guard actually has a cybersecurity unit.
And, knowing what we know now…
No, I mean knowing what we have evidence of, it’s not the dumbest idea. If MN IT responded, the fix would cost more than building the Rondo Land Bridge. And it’s a good, free training opportunity for a cyberwarfare unuit.
I’ll give it an 80, so far.
July 30th, 2025 at 7:28 am
Wait, you mean every state has their own National Guard cyber warfare unit?
How do they practice “live fire” exercises? Maybe against other states?
My money is on Nebraska, pissed that St. Paul is not merely a cold Omaha.
Them, or maybe Wisconsin, after that humiliating loss to the Gophers last Fall.
Not China. Why bother? Anything they want, Tampon Tim would simply hand over. No, this is personal. This is local. Bet on it.
July 30th, 2025 at 7:53 am
Mower county (Austin Minnesota) just paid a ransom after a ransomware attack. The amount was not disclosed.
Not disclosed?
Does this mean Mower county have a black budget?
Can we expect to see camo-colored Geek Squad vans heading our way soon?
July 30th, 2025 at 7:54 am
This team of superheros (from the NG Cybersecurity unit) approach sounds weird. The unit is sitting around in Rosemount doing what exactly? Training? How does that work? And eventually those 19 year old cooks finish their service after a year or two and leave with any acquired expertise. Doesn’t this unit have enough to do already protecting the National Guard?
Moreover, St Paul is going to give these kids admin access to their machine park? How desperate does that sound?
I don’t know about answering scam emails, but this sounds like someone simply clicked on an attachment from a seriously advanced and criminal organization that then shutdown some, many, or all attached machines and is now blackmailing St Paul to get them released.
July 30th, 2025 at 7:56 am
Bigman,
Not every national guard unit has one. In fact, there are only about 20 across the country.
On another note, most people would have conniption fits if they understood how out of date to the point of wonkiness the operating system that runs the entire power grid has been for over 20 years. I’m never surprised when I hear how often foreign hackers, sponsored by several governments, have been in our grid. Green Energy blackouts are the least of the country’s problems.
July 30th, 2025 at 7:57 am
Ransomware. Yes, that’s the word I was looking for. Thanks, Greg.
July 30th, 2025 at 8:19 am
You are welcome, jdm. 🙂
Inquiring minds want to know if Saint Paul has migrated off Windows 95 desktop and Windows NT servers?
[snark]
July 30th, 2025 at 9:10 am
Greg, I don’t know why you would dull the point of your comment by labeling it snark. There are still occurrences of government organizations found running on Win3.1 (https://www.pcworld.com/article/414974/us-government-agencies-are-still-using-windows-31-floppy-disks-and-1970s-computers.html) and using floppy drives (SF Municipal Transportation Agency).
For the sake of completeness, as they get exposed, these do seem to be fixed or resolved. Or maybe just covered up better.
July 30th, 2025 at 12:08 pm
They’ll solve this about the same time they find out who the Umbrella Man was.
July 30th, 2025 at 12:23 pm
In a perfect example of my juvenile sense of humor, I saw this:
“We are the victims of a serious crime,” said St. Paul Technology and Communications Director Jaime Wascalus.
And immediately envisioned Elmer Fudd saying “I’ll get you, you Wascalus Wabbit”
Lots of mockful pointing and laughing on my part at St Paul over this whole incident.
July 30th, 2025 at 2:23 pm
Regarding woefully obsolete systems still being used by government, my favorite example is how NASA kept the Space Shuttle going by hunting down old 8088 processors in old gaming consoles.
More to the point, I wonder how long it takes to come up to speed for cybersecurity people. I would guess that there would at least be some learning curve unless the National Guard and the state were using very similar systems.
And though I’ve worked in technology pretty much all my career (data storage specifically), the more I see of people using tech, the more I like having “dumb” backups.
July 30th, 2025 at 8:20 pm
For some reason, software groups tend to attract the more unstable and useless drones. Think Code of Conduct enforcers in things like Mozilla.
Elects liberal folks, who tend to be rather nontechnical. They can’t differentiate “IT experience” between folks who work on CoC and other behavioral missions from the folks who can often code.
Therefore, when MN ruling idiots see “diverse” IT firms filled by “neurodivergent” people with “experience”, they can’t differentiate between that firm and one that could actually do the work.
Things would change if there were repercussions for idiot contracts given out, but in MN there will never be consequences if your idiot decisions helped fund another liberal because they know that at least some of that contract money went back to the DFL, indirectly at least.
The lack of consequences to bad contracting doesn’t stop in MN. Just look at the Federal DoD for a bipartisan example.
July 31st, 2025 at 2:04 am
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August 2nd, 2025 at 10:12 am
On the north side of MSP behind the Air Force Reserve C-130s, there’s a brick office building. In the basement there’s a Joint Reserve Intelligence Center, that does include personnel with backgrounds for cybersecurity.