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Alert Employees at Kendall Appraisal District Thwarted Cyber Attack

The Secret Service is probing into a cyber-attack against USA's Kendall County Appraisal District wherein the county's PCs were hacked and infected with a virus.

According to the Appraisal District, someone invaded the computer either on January 27, 2010 or earlier, and created no less than four fictitious accounts. The accounts were individually meant for receiving some payment from the district, when issued from the office.

As stated by Gary Eldridge, Chief Appraiser, someone attempted to wire-transfer money out of an account of Kendall County Appraisal District, as per the news published by The Boerne Star on February 3, 2010. Eldridge further said that all of the county's firewalls and virus controls couldn't detect the attacking virus, and the county's employees checking over its wire-transfers noticed the malware and blocked it.

Actually, the employees found some accounts that appeared suspicious. Consequently, they contacted Frost Bank, which immediately blocked them, and simultaneously informed federal officials. Applauding the prompt gesture of the employees, Kendall County stated that the action prevented money from being transferred illegally.

It's reported that for nearly 24 hours, the Kendall County Appraisal District remained closed, while investigating officials scrutinized the computer systems for ensuring that the virus created no more fake accounts.

According to the officials, the virus' source of origin may have been anything, however, its design made it to effectively elude security solutions.

In the meantime, Terry Kramer, Tax Assessor-Collector stated that security officials at the bank knew about the hackers' group and they emphatically told officials at Kendall County that federal authorities too were looking into the incident, since leading entities, particularly some corporations were affected, as reported by The Boerne Star reported this on February 3, 2010.

Kramer further explained that the hackers' group was spread globally, and it kept a track on wire-transfer operations. When a user logged in, the hackers hijacked his password and used it to establish their own money transmissions destined to bank accounts they created and shutdown promptly. This, therefore, made it difficult for tracking the routing source.

Nonetheless, the tracing of the counterfeit bank accounts was made to certain PC located in Las Vegas, NV that apparently established links with overseas.

Related article: Alert Issued on Unauthentic Software Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 2/11/2010

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