Cleveland acknowledges for first time Hopkins airport hack involved ransomware
Updated Apr 29, 2019; Posted Apr 29, 2019
City officials say 95 percent of the flight and baggage screens are operational.
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By Mark Naymik, cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio – All of last week, Mayor Frank Jackson’s administration
downplayed the nature of the malfunctions that disabled flight and baggage
information screens at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, sources said.
The computer system that run the screens, which went dark last Monday, were
compromised by a form malware that sought a ransom from the city, multiple
sources told cleveland.com. Airport officials, however, did not respond to any
such demands.
Contacted Monday about the assertions, Cleveland’s Chief Information Officer
Donald Phillips told cleveland.com that the city did not intend to mislead the
public – and the media - about the problem.
“We were giving you what we knew at the time,” he said.
Phillips acknowledged that he considers the malware involved to be form of
ransomware. He said the city was asked by the malware to respond to an email
address for more information about the hack but the city did not respond.
“We never responded and moved on to fix it,” he said.
In public statements last week, Jackson’s administration described the problem
as a technical issue. The mayor’s office also had declined to even to
acknowledge that the city contacted the FBI about the case, though the FBI has
confirmed as much. On Friday, the city said the systems were affected by a form
of malware, but maintained that did not equate to being hacked.
Chief of Communications Valarie McCall said Monday that the city has a meeting
at 10 a.m. today with city officials and its “federal partners” and will update
the public later this afternoon.
Phillips said “95 percent” of the system operating the screens was back online.
The malware attack has not affected flights schedules or security operations at
the airport. The city has denied reports by some media that other systems, such
as the airport’s payroll and timekeeping, were affected. There is no evidence
that they were affected by the malware.
On Saturday, May 11, 2019, 7:54:17 PM EDT, Phil Smith III <[email protected]>
wrote:
You know, I'm as big a fan of the mainframe as anyone. I've used mainframes
for at least 45 of my 58 years on this planet, have made my living off them for
almost 40 of those, and continue to do so.
But the articles Bill Johnson is citing as proof that the mainframe is so
superior to other platforms are seriously weak, if read with a critical eye.
For those of us in the mainframe part of the industry, failing to recognize
that the mainframe is in trouble is beyond folly-it's hastening its demise.
Every year, more customers migrate away because they can, or at least think
they can. The real value of the mainframe today is in the business logic
implemented in billions of lines of COBOL and assembler and PL/I and the rest.
Reimplementing that from the ground up is what fails every time, whether
spectacularly (as in, it flat-out doesn't work and has to be scrapped) or not
(with "only" significant loss of function and/or bugs that the folks on the
ground must work through with great cost and pain).
We as mainframe fans need to keep our eyes on that ball, and use that extremely
compelling argument against migration, not wave our hands and say "It's
gooderT!" and expect that to somehow prevail against the evidence.
.phsiii
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