U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer warns of computer attacks

By Roger Hannigan Gilson Columbia-Greene Media
U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer proposed initiatives Wednesday to combat the emerging problem for smaller municipalities, police departments, hospitals and school districts in upstate New York being targeted in ransomware cyberattacks.
The attacks, Schumer explained, consisted of hackers, mostly from Russia and the former Soviet republics, locking the computer networks of area organizations and demanding ransom for the users to regain access.

Even after the ransom is paid, Schumer said, the hackers keep the information found in the computers network, which can include personal and financial information, criminal records and medical information.

"The FBI has seen an dramatic uptick the past two years," he added.

The ransomware is introduced into computer systems when someone in the system clicks a link in an email sent by hackers, Schumer said.

The Hudson City School District was hacked and employees' personal information was stolen through a phishing scam Jan. 21, where an employee opened a hacker's email posing as an email from district Superintendent of Schools Maria Suttmeier. There has been no evidence of a ransomware scam, similar to the ones Schumer spoke about Wednesday, at the school district.

Suttmeier was unavailable for comment Wednesday.

Hackers tend to target smaller organizations with less protection against attacks with ransomware, Schumer said.

"This would not happen to thie FBI or a big bank — they would know what to to," he said.

The amount of ransom demanded is not huge, Schumer said, referencing a ransomware attack  on the computer network of the village of Ilion in Herkimer County, where the hackers demanded $800. He said hackers typically ask for about $10,000 from organizations and municipalities, and $300 from individuals.

Hackers strive to find a price high enough to be valuable, but low enough for fast payments from the organizations, Schumer said.

Other ransomware attacks have hit the Capital Region Chamber of Commerce and the town of Manlius in Onondaga County, though the latter successfully fended off the attack, Schumer said.

Schumer called on the Senate to fully fund the President Barack Obama's proposed $3.1 billion Information Technology Modernization Fund to help fight these threats in upstate communities.

The fund "will enable the retirement, replacement, and modernization of [older information technology] that is difficult to secure and expensive to maintain, as well as the formation of a new position — the federal chief information security officer — to drive these changes across the government," according to the White House.

The funding will enable the education of entities to better protect themselves from ransomware attacks, Schumer said.

“We don't need that much money; it would probably be in the tens of millions,” he said.

The more frequent attacks are beginning to come from sources across Asia, Schumer said, but attacks originating in the U.S. are not an issue.

"We can catch the ones over here," he said.

Schumer also said the government could work more with credit card companies, tracking the addresses of individuals or groups demanding the ransoms.