Greece assessor’s office email hacked, sending malicious links to residents across town | #hacker

GREECE, N.Y. — An email address in the Greece Assessor’s Office was hacked and sent out a virus to some people.

News10NBC’s Adelisa Badzic spoke with town officials at Greece Town Hall about the hack.

The town said it already fixed the issue, but a few people have already been fooled. Staff went into it’s network, which was not impacted, and quickly disarmed the link that was sent so if people clicked on it, nothing would happen.

Back in December, the state division of Emergency Services did an audit on the town’s cybersecurity, and the town received the recommendations in February. This has prompted the town to work on the recommendations quicker.

How it happened

A Facebook post from one person said they got the email, clicked on the link, and got hit with a virus.

She said she was expecting something from the assessor’s office, thought it was legitimate and clicked the link. Adelisa reached out to the Facebook user, but she hasn’t responded.

Molly Clifford, the chief of staff for the Town of Greece, explained how the hack worked. Anyone who was on the employee’s directory received the email.

“We did receive an inquiry from, person on the staff, saying that they thought this was a very suspicious email. And when the person whose email it came from, let us know that that was not coming from her.So that’s how it happened. And then we set about, making adjustments so that other people hopefully would not be impacted. “

Clifford went on to say the town was without an I.T. director for more than four years up until about six months ago.

“Unfortunately, the town has really not invested in I.T. and cybersecurity to the degree that we would like to see. So that’s one thing that Supervisor Jeff McCann, you know, it’s his first three months in office, has really taken seriously. So we are working on it and unfortunately, this happened to speed up our reaction because of that,” Clifford said.

She also said when it comes to assessments or actual legal documents, the town will send something by mail, the standard legal method.

If you got the email, just delete it.

What to do if you think your info is compromised

If you think you received a similar email, or a different type of scam email, there are several websites where you can enter your email address or password to find out if it was posted on some hacker site.

If you find out your information has been compromised, don’t panic. Instead, change all your passwords. It’s a good idea to check more than one website because each may be scanning different sites on the dark web.