I read an article about ransomware affecting the public transportation service in Kansas, and I wanted to ask how this can happen. Wikipedia says these are “are typically carried out using a Trojan, entering a system through, for example, a malicious attachment, embedded link in a phishing email, or a vulnerability in a network service,” but how? Wouldn’t someone still have to deliberately click a malicious link to install it? Wouldn’t anyone working for such an agency be educated enough about these threats not to do so?
I wanted to ask in that community, but I was afraid this is such a basic question that I felt foolish posting it there. Does anyone know the exact process by which this typically can happen? I’ve seen how scammers can do this to individuals with low tech literacy by watching Kitboga, but what about these big agencies?
Edit: After reading some of the responses, it’s made me realize why IT often wants to heavily restrict what you can do on a work PC, which is frustrating from an end user perspective, but if people are just clicking links in emails and not following basic internet safety, then damn.
Since people are covering the more common options, I’ll point out a rarer one. If I remember right, (please correct me if I’m wrong) the Stuxnet virus was able to infiltrate a highly sensitive nuclear enrichment facility because someone planted a zip drive in the parking lot, and some employee went ahead and plugged it in at work to see what it was.
Holy shit lmao. It just amazes me that someone working for such a facility would do this, but I suppose it’s the same as people who won’t wash their hands after using the toilet or who don’t use their blinker when driving.
We’re just a bunch of shit-flinging primates, aren’t we? We just do thinks without thinking.
And the worst part is, given the right circumstances (lack of sleep, extreme stress, illness), maybe that person could be me.
You already pointed out reasons, why people might lack the necessary judgement in one moment. The issue is that it is enough if one person fails to abide by the security rules once. So for the attacker all that is needed for a large enough organization is persistence.
So in that sense at least, it’s similar to the scammers on Kitboga. Just send out a shit-ton of feelers and hope something sticks.
Phone and email scams work just the same. Only takes one grandma emptying her savings to make it worth it. And they get a lot of people who should otherwise know better.
Phone scams especially use high pressure, unfamiliar situations, and fear to keep people from thinking about what’s actually happening, and you end up with otherwise intelligent people buying iTunes gift cards to get out of a warrant. Usually the victim figures out they’ve been scammed within minutes of the call ending, unless they have some cognitive decline.
Also people often need to experience a problem before they realize its a problem. I doubt that specific individual will ever make that specific mistake again.
This is also true.