I read an article about ransomware affecting the public transportation service in Kansas, and I wanted to ask how this can happen. Wikipedia says these are “are typically carried out using a Trojan, entering a system through, for example, a malicious attachment, embedded link in a phishing email, or a vulnerability in a network service,” but how? Wouldn’t someone still have to deliberately click a malicious link to install it? Wouldn’t anyone working for such an agency be educated enough about these threats not to do so?
I wanted to ask in that community, but I was afraid this is such a basic question that I felt foolish posting it there. Does anyone know the exact process by which this typically can happen? I’ve seen how scammers can do this to individuals with low tech literacy by watching Kitboga, but what about these big agencies?
There are many ways in. Sometimes no one has to click on or do anything, instead the attacker finds a security vulnerability in e.g. a web application, which gives them access to the server the app is running on. From there the attacker can look for other vulnerabilities to penetrate further into the network. Or if the system/network admin hasn’t properly configured/secured the network, then the attacker can easily move into other parts of the network.