US Cities Under Cyberattack, Future Uncertain

A new cyberattack on the city of Lowell in Massachusetts has been attributed to the Play Cybercriminals group, which previously attacked the American city of Auckland in February this year. Local authorities confirmed that an attack on April 24, termed a “cyberurine,” had violated the city’s internal IT networks causing substantial disruption to all servers, services, telephones and other systems. However, emergency service systems were not affected. The Play group, which took responsibility for the attack, claims to have stolen vast amounts of information, including personal data, passports, identity certificates, financial documents, budgets and more. The group has threatened to publish this data on May 10, unless a ransom is paid. Federal and full-time law enforcement agencies have initiated an investigation. During the recovery process, several systems had to be disabled, with full telephone communications still being restored. In July 2022, Play cybercriminals emerged, specializing in attacks on government structures in Latin America, but drew particular attention after their destructive attack on Auckland, which took several weeks to recover from. Meanwhile, another large-scale attack on the American city of Dallas, which paralyzed many city services, is thought to have been carried out by the Play cybercriminals, but organized by another group, Royal.