[BreachExchange] Wellington, Fla., Breach Larger than Initially Thought

[Inga Goddijn]

http://www.govtech.com/security/Wellington-Fla-Breach-Larger-than-Initially-Thought.html

Wellington, Fla., Chief information officer William Silliman also said the
breach began as an effort to mine for the digital currency Bitcoin, but at
some point expanded to include a sophisticated “skimmer” to capture credit
card numbers.

In a news release last week, Wellington warned that utility customers who
made one-time debit or credit card payments between July 2017 and the
beginning of this month may have had their credit card numbers stolen as
part of the breach.

But one-time debit or credit card payments made to the village’s code,
building, business licenses, parking tickets and planning departments also
were exposed, Silliman said, citing the results of further assessment of
the targeted server.

The system now is safe to use, officials said.Other forms of payment —
including e-checks and payments made over the phone — were not affected,
and credit card numbers that were set up to pay automatically should be
safe, Silliman said.

The breach did not target Wellington specifically, but rather set its
sights on the Click2Gov vendor the village uses to collect online payments.
Superion, the software’s creator, notified Wellington at 2 p.m. June 6 that
its servers may have been exposed, and within an hour, the decision was
made to shut down the system, Silliman said.

Wellington isn’t the first municipality to suffer a breach of its Click2Gov
system. Numerous communities across the U.S. have reported a similar issue.
Lake Worth said in February a breach of its Click2Gov system had left its
customers exposed, and two California communities reported similar breaches
in February and May.

To better understand the breach, Silliman and his team are working with the
Sylint Group, a data breach specialist that has worked with other
communities where Click2Gov information has been exposed.

In Wellington’s case, the hackers switched the server into a mode that made
the real code invisible, then layered their Bitcoin-mining and credit
card-skimming code on top of that. The code would collect batches of credit
card numbers, encrypt them and ship them to parts unknown. Then the code
would “clean up after itself,” Silliman said. “It was really well-written
and, this is Sylint’s term, specifically written for Click2Gov.”

Once Wellington knew the potential severity of the breach, it began
building new virtual servers to host its billing system. The new servers
have added layers of security beyond what previously existed, Silliman
said, declining to elaborate publicly.

There was some hint of Click2Gov’s issues beginning last year, when
Wellington received an email from Superion in September and another in
October, saying some vulnerabilities were possible. Silliman’s team in both
cases followed the steps to take care of any issues. Another notification
arrived in April, and Wellington followed the same process.

Council members and Silliman expressed frustration with Superion,
questioning what the company knew and when.

While Superion did not answer specific questions for this article, a
spokeswoman did send a statement: “Protecting our customers and their
clients’ data is of the utmost importance to Superion,” she wrote. “Last
year, we reported that a limited number of on-premise clients’ networks
were compromised. We continue to investigate any suspicious activity and
have engaged a leading forensic investigation firm to assist in our
efforts. We notified Superion customers of this incident, including the
Village of Wellington, and are working closely with our customers to
swiftly resolve and remediate this matter.”
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.riskbasedsecurity.com/pipermail/breachexchange/attachments/20180615/33b7f19a/attachment.html>