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— Quincy Massachusetts News by Quincy Quarry News – News, Opinion and Commentary.
“Talk about easy marks …”
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Midweek last week the City of Quincy was yet again hit with a hack attack.
This time City of Quincy City Solicitor Jim “Dim” Timmins’ City of Quincy email account was hacked and then the hacker used Dim’s email account to send out an as yet unknown number of malware-laden emails to apparently Quincy locals.
Quincy Quarry News has duly confirmed this hack attack with someone in the Solicitor’s office as well as related problems.
Same old same old at Old City Hall
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While this time $3.5 million was not cyber heisted, an yet unknown number of people had their digital devices disabled and so often ended up having to pay for restoration repair services.
While early suspicions among at least some who were hit with the malware spam sent via the solicitor’s email address suspected that they were targeted given their opposition to the currently said to be deferred outsized raises for Quincy Mayor Thomas P, Koch and city council members, so far it would apparent that the malware was more generally distributed.
At least so far anyway.
Proper safe streaming protection
A file photo
The Quarry also so found out that last Thursday and Friday phones were all but ringing off the hooks at solicitor’s office with often enough irate callers calling in about how their email devices had been nfected by the hacker’s malware
Further confirmed was that this hack attack has been turned over to experts for review, however, it was not made clear as to who are the experts.
Regardless of what might eventually be disclosed publicly as regards what went wrong, most annoying is that it would clearly appear that the City Solicitor was not practicing ultimately simple cybersecurity along with how the City of Quincy IT department had apparently not been duly riding herd on city employees so as to assure proper security compliance.
“FYI: not my fault.”
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Further, while early suspicions among at least some of those who were hit with the malware spam sent via the Solicitor’s email address where that they were targeted given their opposition to the currently said to be deferred outsized raises for Quincy Mayor Thomas P, Koch and city council members, so far it would apparent that the malware was more generally distributed.
At least so far anyway.
Even so, Quincy Quarry News’ ever-growing legions of loyal readers can count on Quincy Quarry to continue to follow this story and report updates as appropriate.
Has Dim been hacked, or is he just off his meds? Sounds like our underpaid Mayor might want to ban his team from watching explicit content on city computers and devices.
“Further confirmed was that the hack attack has been turned over to experts for review but unclear as to who are the experts.”
What a wonderful and fully competent bunch the city has in its IT dept.
I wonder if the “experts” are the same consulting (insulting?) firm that recommended that the Lord Mayor and the rubber stampers on the City Council should receive ridiculously “generous” raises.
Did anyone actually think this group of grifters would not vote Koch and themselves these raises?
Oh, here we go again -— another thrilling episode of Quincy vs. The Hackers! At this rate, maybe we should just elect a cybersecurity expert as mayor. Is the city using a password that’s basically ‘password123’? Or are hackers just out there hitting the ‘Easy Button’ on Quincy’s firewalls? Either way, it’s comforting to know our city’s digital defenses are about as secure as a leaky faucet. I’m starting to think Quincy should make ‘Being Hacked’ the new town motto -— it’s got a nice ring to it and, let’s be honest, we’re clearly experts in that field!
Isn’t the FBI wonderful. I would wager the message Dim Tim’s computer sent out read “Congratulations, the City of Quincy administration has been under a federal RICO investigation since April 8, 2019 and any recipients of communications from this account have been attached to this massive probe. To report public corruption fbi.gov/tips”
Since only 2019? Things have gone downhill since my tenure as the head of the FBI.
Mayor Koch challenged the hacker, even went so far as to dare the hacker, to go ahead and just try to crack Quincy’s impenetrable bullet-proof computer system. Mayor Koch promised the hacker a healthy pension payment if he/she was successful. Well, Mayor Koch lost that bet.