BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — A cyber-attack can start with something as simple as an email. Experts say all it takes is clicking a link for a virus to get inside and take down a computer network.
It’s something they say happens every day across the country, including here in Alabama.
Cyber-crime is crippling networks and shutting down cities across Alabama, and the Birmingham FBI says it’s a trend that’s here to stay.
“Ransomware is very much so on the rise. It is very much of a focus of the FBI to combat,” said Christina Wessel, FBI Birmingham Special Agent.
Three months ago, the city of Tarrant became the target of hackers.
Tarrant’s IT Director Christopher Smoke says the city was shut down for 24 hours.
“There was an attempt on the city network. The origination point, I’m not at liberty to discuss, but we were notified by city personnel they had a pop-up on their screen,” said Smoke.
He says it was a ransomware attack, which is when a virus enters a computer network.
Dr. Ragib Hasan, the director of UAB’s Cybersecurity Center, says this type of attack has the potential to cripple an entire city.
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“As it infects each machine, it would look for important information and encrypt it—maybe images, maybe documents, or other critical documents or operational critical files. It would go ahead and encrypt it. After they encrypt it, they will ask for a ransom,” said Dr. Hasan.
In Tarrant, the effects of the attack were minimized by security measures the city already had in place.
“We had our system designed as such that whenever there was an attack, a lot of the mechanisms shut themselves down,” said Smoke.
In April 2024, the city of Birmingham experienced what they referred to as a “network disruption.”
Cybersecurity experts say that disruption was also a ransomware attack.
Over the past year, the mayor and city council have remained mostly silent about the disruption. CBS 42 reached out to the city several times for an interview. Instead, the city sent a statement that reads in part:
“Throughout the process and in collaboration with outside experts, the city fully secured its data and resumed the full operability of systems.”
That makes two Alabama cities, with no connection, targeted by hackers.
So — why were they chosen? Special Agent Wessel says most times it’s not as complex as people might think.
“You’ll see it reported on dark web forums, ‘Hey, there is this vulnerability.’ And these actors, they will go out and exploit that,” Wessel said. “They do not care if you are a dentist office, a city, a government. They don’t care if you make products for the military or rubber bands. They want money.”
So, what is the solution to what experts say is a growing problem?
“There is a very simple way—that is backup. If you have good backup of your data, all you have to do is purge all the infected computers with the data, or reformat the hard drives, and restore the entire system from a most recent backup,” said Dr. Hasan.
In Birmingham’s case, the city says it spent over a million dollars since the network disruption to upgrade its system in hopes of preventing similar attacks in the future.
As for Tarrant, Smoke says the city learned a valuable lesson and wants other organizations to be proactive about cybersecurity.
“It will eventually come to you. Unfortunately, there are not too many people or organizations that have not been touched by ransomware or cyber attacks,” Smoke said.
All of the cybersecurity experts we spoke with say ransomware and cybercrime aren’t going away – in fact, they all say it will continue to rise.
But as criminals continue to attack, the FBI and cybersecurity experts say they are confident in their ability to spot these crimes and limit the harm they cause to organizations.
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