Connecticut

Cyber Attack Targets State Agencies

Some of Connecticut's state agencies experienced a cyber attack late Friday afternoon, according to the Department of Administrative Services.

Starting late Friday evening, the State's security monitoring system alerted security teams that it had detected a suspicious event that matched the profile for a ransomware virus, said a spokesperson for the department. 

In an email obtained by NBC Connecticut, the ransomware virus was identified as the WannaCry virus. 

The total number of infected machines was 160 across 12 different agencies, according to the email.  The names of which agencies were impacted was not made immediately available. 

Back in May 2017 computer experts started warning of the virus and how it could lock up your hard drive if you were running Microsoft Windows. The hackers would then demand between $300 to $600 payable in Bitcoin to unlock it. The virus ended up infecting an estimated 200,000 computers in 150 counties.

According to DAS Chief Information Officer Mark Raymond, the state mobilized its agency IT workforce and alerted agency commissioners to the issue. 

"State technology resources have made significant progress and expect a full containment this evening," Raymond said in a statement. "We have no reports of files being encrypted or any data loss."

Raymond said although they are still going through final reports from agencies, they are not expecting any significant impact to state business on Monday morning. 

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