Hackers attacked the email system used by Missouri’s State Government employees

State Government Offices of Missouri, a Midwestern state of United States, fall prey to a phishing attack on January 31, 2019. The hackers attacked the email system that is used by more than thousands of employees of the state government in Missouri.

Missouri's Office of Cyber Security notified in a letter to the state workers on the afternoon about this large phishing attack on the state. The phishing attack began at 7 a.m. on January 31, 2019. The letter also said that, "the campaign is still in progress, and it has been identified that some of the malicious emails are making it through the advanced detection system into State of Missouri mailboxes".

The acting Division Chief, Stephen Meyer, have cautioned the workers to beware of the emails having the subject lines such as "AT&T bill is available" or "invoice", and not to click them ever.

It was only by the late afternoon of January 31, 2019, that Brittany Ruess, spokeswoman of the Office of Administration, told Post-Dispatch that it looks like the phishing attack had ended. She further said that the officials believe that this phishing attack was unsuccessful. Ruess also added that "cyber security protections prevented any loss of data or information. However, the Office of Cyber Security continues to monitor the
situation".

This phishing attack is a result of a recent proposal where the Governor Mike Parson asked the lawmakers to give a major boost to spending on the information technology (IT)costs in budget for the next fiscal year, which will begin from July 1 onwards. As per Parson's proposal, a funding boost should be given to Office of Administration for launching major consolidation of the various computer systems and pushing the information technology budget to around $250 million, which was more than twice the budget of last year.

As a part of the routine training against the potential cybercrimes, the IT Division has earlier conducted tests on the workers to check whether they click on the malicious emails.

In case anyone believes that he/she is a target of malicious phishing attack or have received a spam email, then he/she should report the problem as early as possible.

» SPAMfighter News - 2/18/2019