This happened to my state's library system a while back. Public computers and free wifi were down for a few months, but no major disruptions of lending services. I don't think the state paid any ransom, instead they just repaired their systems.
I am not a crook, but sounds like it was a pretty high-skill thief. So relatively low risk - and catching & punishing that thief mighta been a pretty low priority for everyone from the on-shift cops to the most idealist juror.
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if automated AI agents are probing vulnerabilities and following a preset playbook for extortion without any human involvement.
Definitely, but ransomware groups generally have incremental customer acquisition costs/margins that most other industries can only dream of. They'll encrypt first, ask questions/set prices later. The whole process might even be fully automated at this point, "thanks" to cryptocurrencies.
I remember hearing that they do have customer support, though! Not sure if you can escalate to a sales rep to get a personalized quote or non-profit discount from there.
Many companies now pay for this kind of insurance. So even though the company may not seem like they have the deepest pockets, it's really more about paying the insurance premiums and the insurer pays the ransom.
I recall a colleague whose firm was hit by a ransomware attack. When they reached out to the insurer and sent them the details of the attackers, the first response from the insurance agent was, "Oh good, they are a reputable group. We've worked with them in the past. They will simply take the ransom and return your network/files to you." My colleague was shocked by the nonchalance.
Can vouch for customer support, they need you to believe that they can actually unlock things when paid. They'll work with you to run a trial/demo to unlock a handful of files and generally will bend over backwards to make sure the "end user" has enough faith that they will get their data back in order to convince them to send the payment.
I say this as a government-skeptical conservative: libraries are a great use of taxpayer money. Of all the things that people can vote to tax themselves for, here’s something that everyone can use. It’s great.
Many other uses of tax dollars are handouts for a very small number of people that most of us see no benefit from (and may even have side-effects that make things worse for everybody else).
I have never seen a service the library provided that I didn't think was at least marginally worth throwing some tax cents to provide for free for people that need it. I looked at the NYPL services page https://www.nypl.org/help/services and none of it looked not useful. Were any of them necessary? I mean, probably not in the way nobody needs a library, only that libraries are a fundamentally good service to a community.
A beloved public institution, that improves society as a whole, is equally available to all, has enough money to do their mission well offer auxiliary services and to take advantage of PSA programs?
Today I learned that Queens has a public library system that predated the consolidated New York City library system and fiercely fought to maintain independence rather than come under the control of a Manhattan-based system
It seems that NY has a law that allows anyone in the state to be a member at any library in the state, but there's an opt-out if that would put an undue burden on the local system.
In practice, that means anyone in NYS can be a member of any of the NYC libraries + Buffalo. The others have either opted out, require you to visit in person, and/or pay a non-resident fee.
The tbree systems in NYC also serve the entire state, not just the city. Any NYS resident can get a card at each. I do and use the e book systems for all at the same time even though I rarely go into the city these days.
Seems that even as three separate systems, they'd at least just let a card from any of them work at all three. Or issue a single unified card and let that be the only point of commonality between them, if all other operations being independent is important to them
Kind of like how many regions will have a unified transit payment card, even if it covers a half dozen completely independent adjacent transit systems
So you pull everything off the shelves, enter it into the system, then reshelve it.
The library has something like 5 million books. How many could you enter into an empty system each day? Maybe 1000? That would take a decade to complete.
When the British Library was hit by ransomware, some systems were down for months. They were old software that didn't run on the newer more secure systems the library had to migrate to. And there was no funding to rewrite them, not without cutting already affected services.
Is this due to the php vulnerability from a few weeks ago? Guessing they were on some php-based cms, and their staff never got around to fixing it in time.
Shit… for a second I was worried somebody stole the books and encrypted them on paper… hah! But luckily only website is broken it seems… uff.. most important thing in a library is safe… rest seems so much bollocks as a target… what is wrong with this world?!
NGL it is crazy to me to declare no one needs a library when a new hardcover book is at least $30. I would be out hundreds of dollars, probably over a thousand a year, if I had to buy new every time I wanted to read some book I heard of and maybe didn't even enjoy (the guilt-free "read 20% decide its not for me" is amazing).
Basically most people do not read, and most people here have no social life.
Libraries are for reading and socialising, so many users here have a really really hard time to imagine that someone might have some benefit from them.
And that's far from all. Research, tool lending, children's activities, maker spaces, meetup spaces, study areas... My wife ran a sewing meetup at our library a few weeks ago; tons of people showed up with machines and made all kinds of stuff.
Yeah but even if I didn't read, I would want any kids I own/any kids someone else owns to be able to access books, and even middle grade hardcover chapter books can be $30. I can't imagine paying even $10 for every single big flippy book they give the toddlers, that's gotta be at least a hundred a week just for the luxury of reading to the child for bed.
> Probably most of the relevant functions of a library can be accomplished by other more efficient means.
Two points:
Many of those relevant functions were picked up by libraries over the years due to the lack of, or cutbacks to, other government services.
Some people prefer, or can only use, services offered through libraries because they offer them with few, or no, questions asked. That is rarely the case with dedicated services, where funding often has more conditions tied to it.
Always shocking how willing some Americans are to tear down services that a large portion of the world would envy. Particularly when they can't even be bothered to look up what the service provides to the community.
> For everyone talking about how important this is, I'm curious how many have visited a library in the last 5 years to actually get a book.
At least every other week if not more often. I also use the library digital services a good bit. There's always lots of people at the libraries I go to browsing books, I imagine they're also checking them out.
> it could probably disappear and no one would miss it.
The libraries I go to have so many people using their various services constantly. People studying and reading. Kids playing, exploring and reading. 3D printers buzzing. Classes and events being hosted.
> one extra field trip for every school child per year
You're going to replace something lots of people use across all age ranges constantly with a single day event for only children once a year? Sounds like a terrible loss IMO.
I agree a library is way more than just a place to get books today. They do offer a lot of community center features, and I think modern library designs should cater to that need as well. But they're not homeless shelters, they're not daycares. They still have their own specific use, a general place of learning and knowledge for all people. A place for all the community to come together, not just little kids or just the homeless. It's just the way we go about sharing that has evolved a bit over time compared to the stodgy old libraries of the past.
You're getting downvoted to hell for this, I assume the excuse people are giving themselves to do this is that it is mostly irrelevant to the story - but the story is an irrelevant story. The only things interesting about it are incidental.
And your thought was my first thought. It's as if the soup kitchens were shut down because somebody had stolen all of the prayer beads, meaning that none of the homeless could pray before they ate.
Libraries have now simply become official copyright access points. I lived in libraries my entire childhood. I remember in my teens being both depressed and excited that my local library was going to close down for six months to be gutted and remodeled. I was soon the one that was gutted when I found out that after the remodel, the library would have a 20% smaller capacity for books. I had to conclude that the remodel was mostly so it would look better in photographs, people would get kickbacks, and people would get resume-padding.
Libraries have been retconned into necessary public spaces but in that case, the books are just an excuse. Get rid of the excuse and consciously create necessary public spaces. I've literally heard their existence justified by the fact that homeless people clog them up and sleep in them, which has been one of the major reasons for declines in library use imo. Just take care of homeless people.
I'd even rank access to a librarian, especially a research librarian, as of higher value than a building full of books. AI has forced us to take a different approach to intellectual property, whether we're going to consciously do that in the public interest and design systems that will protect the positives that we attribute to copyright, or whether we're going to do that through inaction by allowing the wealthiest people in the world to rent human knowledge back to us without having paid a dime for it.
I'd prefer that we govern, but if we're going to go the passive route of insisting that nothing a rich man does is a crime, we can continue to settle it through piracy. Either way, libraries are cooked.
You're aware that this incident includes the inter library loan, so it is depriving citizens in one neighborhood from discovering and reading the millions of books that don't fit into the building locally, and prevents their ebook loans?
Your recollection and what seems like bitterness at the memory of a remodel that may have changed the function of your library to e.g. provide more seating space or computer availability or cooling capacity (you don't say what changed, just that it involved less space).
Anyway, the library system, it's librarians, and everything here is being impacted so they can't really serve their users they way the system was built to serve. I was at a queens library the other day while this was ongoing and everything was pretty copacetic, so I'm not sure why you're so concerned about homelessness in the library when that's not really a part of the situation here.
You can't really expect a library with hardly any money to do something like that. With companies, however, I would expect them to have a backup of their entire system so that, if something like this happens, they can simply format everything and restore the backup without significant downtime. Ideally, this should be done in a way that isn’t tied to specific hardware. Then they can simply store the backup with AWS or a similar provider and, if necessary, activate the server and continue working from there.
If only we could have some kind of jobs program where the government could pay people to fix their crap. A side benefit would be a reduction in unemployment.
There are no unemployed cybersecurity professionals (who are qualified). There is likely a fraction of a percent who are "Between jobs" and that's about it. It's still very difficult to find and hire qualified candidates, even despite the recent surge in programmers making the leap.
That's a somewhat naive take, ransomware attacks have been launched in the past against many organizations that spend a lot on security such as the Dodd Group, various airports, healthcare providers, and energy infrastructure. The Ukraine war has shown that virtually nothing is secure against dedicated attacks, all kinds of government sites, satellite communications, and even live TV programming have been attacked successfully by both sides. In the war, the attacks are more destructive, but the same techniques for entry could also be used by ransomware.
Libraries also have a extremely difficult task, they have complex, bespoke/customized older technology backends.
Their systems are largely open to the public, their computer spaces might be the only computer some have access to. There was a time when the advice about a dodgy file was to just open it at the library computer.
Much of their staff might be outreach hires and so limited/no workexperience that might have endured corporate training around information governance or cyber security.
And they do that on a budget where they can't afford shoe strings.
when it is other nation states that are attacking, its up to the nation you are in to defend you. you dont expect costco to defend itself against Spetznaz?
honestly blame Elmo / DOGE for this; they are the $company who divested your security for you, thinking you could just "wing" it too
I wish the headlines around such things were more honest and would just say the truth: "$company is currently offline because we never really invested in security and thought we could just wing it"
Yes, because public libraries are well known for being awash in spare cash and never ever operate on a shoestring budget.
Exactly. No sarcasm. Public services should stop hiding the pain. People voted for this. They should carry the pain. In this case the QPL should have said decades ago: “we cannot offer these services in a secure manner on this budget, therefor we will stop offering our services.” Instead they choose to “wing it”.
It should be noted that the NY library system (NYPL, QPL, BPL) are some of the most well funded libraries in the world, and they still have issues like this. Smaller libraries have no chance.
Most of what libraries do technologically is now outsourced to SAAS companies that specialize in the library space (there are at least 2 major one in the US, and I think at least 3 or 4). (encore and bibliocommons are the 2 major ones that I remembered and am pretty sure I've seen at least 2 others).
If everything you are doing is in the cloud, I'd argue that recovering from a ransomware attack is more of a question of if the SAAS company did its job right (which it should be more capable of handling). Of course, that's a reasonable question if they did (similarly why I prefer paying with paypal or google or even (as not so common) amazon third party payment systems than a retailers own internal payment system, yeah they might screw up too, but they invest a lot more into not screwing it up).
The data is probably is somewhat safe in the cloud. I expect what’s infected is a bunch of PC clients locally. The logical thing that could have happened is someone with an admin level of access on the Windows domain opened an attachment or got phished, and that allowed the ransomware to deploy to all the on-prem systems. Unless they have customized the ransomware to do anything special for this particular library software, it may be not all that bad in terms of data at risk. Though it’s possible the human attackers received cloud software credentials, and could have used that to exported patron data to threaten to leak.
What if the budget is cut so harshly that there is no budget for someone who might potentially notice the problem (and fix it before it is exploited, or make the “we have to stop” decision) at all? The problem becomes undetectable until exploited, so you can't proactively shut things down.
Your assumption that enough people would change their vote (or non-vote if they didn't turn out previously) based on this to make a difference, I think is unlikely to be correct. People complain a lot about public services when they don't work well, but seldom consider (or do but seldom prioritise them) them at the ballot box.
Well, i am basing this on 25+ years of being sysadmin at governmental organisations where most of my colleagues never learned the password to the next level. The password being “no”. Instead they always (alway!) hide the pain so the management layers above know nothing. If they were ever interested. By showing the pain we may actually get them interested. We tried hiding it. Didnt work. Lets try something different.
And they would risk being completely shut down, I assume. Is that a better option? I'm not even talking about the livelihood of the librarians, but about the loss of the public service.
Winging it and making do with what you can is still probably a great deal for the public. Assuming that something shouldn't be done if it can't be done very well is an interesting position to take.
Typical developer response: if you can’t do X 100% properly you shouldn’t be doing it.
Sure, let’s close down all libraries and all public services for that matter. Let the public feel the pain. They will understand and vote better next time, right?
You think it is lack of information that got people to vote for this nonsense?
Closing things down is the argument taken to a logical extreme. Could they function without collecting that much PII though? If you can't do it right, don't do it, is far more reasonable when limited to just the collection of PII or other potentially sensitive information. Some identifying data might be absolutely required of course, but the great many cases like this show that collecting the absolute minimum must become the default choice.
If you leave your car unlocked and police detects that, they can confiscate your keys and probably even fine you after you collected them. The same principle applies to everything. To a certain extend, it is your duty to secure things. Just putting a sign there "please dont fuck with me" isn't enough these days.
That’s not an excuse. They chose to operate an online service, one that collects personal information. That entails the responsibility to secure it. If they can’t do that, they shouldn’t have offered the service.
Not really. The victim here is the people whose information has been distributed, not the system (and the people running it) the information was exfiltrated from.
If we are going to use an SA analogy, this is closer to the recent case of a hotel chain where there were several instances of staff giving “randoms” keys to rooms that they should not have. Best practise procedures were not being followed, the ne'er-do-wells took advantage of this, someone else suffered as a result.
If you process personal data, you must secure it against attacks. Are you suggesting that they could just put the addresses of their customers on their website with a warning not to download them, and if someone downloaded them anyway then it would be the fault of that person that they were leaked?
Society hold a strong double standard when it comes to the notion of blame in criminal acts. In some cases, it is fully put on the criminal. In other cases, it is put on victims of the criminal. While each case can use logic to try to defend it, they are different standards not used consistently. Trying to call out this double standard is a sort of act of profaning the current social norm and not appreciated by most, no different than trying to attack the dominant moral system 500 or 1000 years ago for inconsistencies.
If we were being consistent, then to your later question, yes. But pointing this out is picking at society's reverse scale.
According to this logic, anyone using PHP should also not be processing personal data, and of course Java, and also Javascript, and any other language that has had a huge zero-day. In NYS, your name is considered personal data, so these libraries should not have any digital collection of the names of their members let alone any online services. Although, I'd prefer we start with Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, etc when it comes to making them lose the right to storing all personal data every time they have a vulnerability.
There is a difference between being hit by the exploit of a zero-day and being hit by the exploit of something (incorrect security implementations) that has been known to be incorrect for years, decades even. The zero-day in PHP is not your fault (unless perhaps you wrote or maintain that bit of PHP) but bad security implementation using PHP (silly example: not bothering to hash password because it is easier and allows you to allow for typos which is convenient for the user) is ultimately the organisations fault.
Or alternatively we could hold criminals responsible and return to a high trust society where you can provide public services without having your own military department.
You are aware that personal information is routinely stored in places that you can break into with a literal brick to smash a window? Somehow its only computers where people turn off their brains and argue that proactive measures need to be 100% effective at blocking all attacks no matter how high the cost.
> Somehow its only computers where people turn off their brains and argue that proactive measures need to be 100% effective at blocking all attacks no matter how high the cost.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone say they should be 100% effective. Even those physical locations follow some physical security practices. The difference is that computers can be attacked from literally anywhere in the world, and good luck finding the people who did it.
But even the best physical security principles really only deter polite criminals. The breach is just as impactful whether someone leaves a door unlocked, or if someone just observes the hour a janitor leaves at night and waits outside the door and clubs him before he can lock up. What difference does it make to those affected by the breach between those two situations?
https://globalnews.ca/news/9296036/city-of-westmount-target-...
https://globalnews.ca/news/10812458/calgary-public-library-b...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library_cyberattack
This happened to my state's library system a while back. Public computers and free wifi were down for a few months, but no major disruptions of lending services. I don't think the state paid any ransom, instead they just repaired their systems.
That would also have arguably been more risky of a redemptive act than the right thing to do in this circumstance.
I am not a crook, but sounds like it was a pretty high-skill thief. So relatively low risk - and catching & punishing that thief mighta been a pretty low priority for everyone from the on-shift cops to the most idealist juror.
I remember hearing that they do have customer support, though! Not sure if you can escalate to a sales rep to get a personalized quote or non-profit discount from there.
I recall a colleague whose firm was hit by a ransomware attack. When they reached out to the insurer and sent them the details of the attackers, the first response from the insurance agent was, "Oh good, they are a reputable group. We've worked with them in the past. They will simply take the ransom and return your network/files to you." My colleague was shocked by the nonchalance.
some groups offer it (not out of goodness: rather on price discrimination grounds)
Many other uses of tax dollars are handouts for a very small number of people that most of us see no benefit from (and may even have side-effects that make things worse for everybody else).
A beloved public institution, that improves society as a whole, is equally available to all, has enough money to do their mission well offer auxiliary services and to take advantage of PSA programs?
What a treasure.
It seems that NY has a law that allows anyone in the state to be a member at any library in the state, but there's an opt-out if that would put an undue burden on the local system.
In practice, that means anyone in NYS can be a member of any of the NYC libraries + Buffalo. The others have either opted out, require you to visit in person, and/or pay a non-resident fee.
Kind of like how many regions will have a unified transit payment card, even if it covers a half dozen completely independent adjacent transit systems
Wipe the system and start again.
The library has something like 5 million books. How many could you enter into an empty system each day? Maybe 1000? That would take a decade to complete.
That explains the Voynich Manuscript, doesn't it?
Libraries are for reading and socialising, so many users here have a really really hard time to imagine that someone might have some benefit from them.
A good library is a focal point for a community.
Two points:
Many of those relevant functions were picked up by libraries over the years due to the lack of, or cutbacks to, other government services.
Some people prefer, or can only use, services offered through libraries because they offer them with few, or no, questions asked. That is rarely the case with dedicated services, where funding often has more conditions tied to it.
Personally, I believe these are important for a functional society more generally.
At least every other week if not more often. I also use the library digital services a good bit. There's always lots of people at the libraries I go to browsing books, I imagine they're also checking them out.
> it could probably disappear and no one would miss it.
The libraries I go to have so many people using their various services constantly. People studying and reading. Kids playing, exploring and reading. 3D printers buzzing. Classes and events being hosted.
> one extra field trip for every school child per year
You're going to replace something lots of people use across all age ranges constantly with a single day event for only children once a year? Sounds like a terrible loss IMO.
I agree a library is way more than just a place to get books today. They do offer a lot of community center features, and I think modern library designs should cater to that need as well. But they're not homeless shelters, they're not daycares. They still have their own specific use, a general place of learning and knowledge for all people. A place for all the community to come together, not just little kids or just the homeless. It's just the way we go about sharing that has evolved a bit over time compared to the stodgy old libraries of the past.
And your thought was my first thought. It's as if the soup kitchens were shut down because somebody had stolen all of the prayer beads, meaning that none of the homeless could pray before they ate.
Libraries have now simply become official copyright access points. I lived in libraries my entire childhood. I remember in my teens being both depressed and excited that my local library was going to close down for six months to be gutted and remodeled. I was soon the one that was gutted when I found out that after the remodel, the library would have a 20% smaller capacity for books. I had to conclude that the remodel was mostly so it would look better in photographs, people would get kickbacks, and people would get resume-padding.
Libraries have been retconned into necessary public spaces but in that case, the books are just an excuse. Get rid of the excuse and consciously create necessary public spaces. I've literally heard their existence justified by the fact that homeless people clog them up and sleep in them, which has been one of the major reasons for declines in library use imo. Just take care of homeless people.
I'd even rank access to a librarian, especially a research librarian, as of higher value than a building full of books. AI has forced us to take a different approach to intellectual property, whether we're going to consciously do that in the public interest and design systems that will protect the positives that we attribute to copyright, or whether we're going to do that through inaction by allowing the wealthiest people in the world to rent human knowledge back to us without having paid a dime for it.
I'd prefer that we govern, but if we're going to go the passive route of insisting that nothing a rich man does is a crime, we can continue to settle it through piracy. Either way, libraries are cooked.
Your recollection and what seems like bitterness at the memory of a remodel that may have changed the function of your library to e.g. provide more seating space or computer availability or cooling capacity (you don't say what changed, just that it involved less space).
Anyway, the library system, it's librarians, and everything here is being impacted so they can't really serve their users they way the system was built to serve. I was at a queens library the other day while this was ongoing and everything was pretty copacetic, so I'm not sure why you're so concerned about homelessness in the library when that's not really a part of the situation here.
Their systems are largely open to the public, their computer spaces might be the only computer some have access to. There was a time when the advice about a dodgy file was to just open it at the library computer.
Much of their staff might be outreach hires and so limited/no workexperience that might have endured corporate training around information governance or cyber security.
And they do that on a budget where they can't afford shoe strings.
honestly blame Elmo / DOGE for this; they are the $company who divested your security for you, thinking you could just "wing" it too
Yes, because public libraries are well known for being awash in spare cash and never ever operate on a shoestring budget.
Most of what libraries do technologically is now outsourced to SAAS companies that specialize in the library space (there are at least 2 major one in the US, and I think at least 3 or 4). (encore and bibliocommons are the 2 major ones that I remembered and am pretty sure I've seen at least 2 others).
If everything you are doing is in the cloud, I'd argue that recovering from a ransomware attack is more of a question of if the SAAS company did its job right (which it should be more capable of handling). Of course, that's a reasonable question if they did (similarly why I prefer paying with paypal or google or even (as not so common) amazon third party payment systems than a retailers own internal payment system, yeah they might screw up too, but they invest a lot more into not screwing it up).
I've noticed Spydus seems to have a big marketshare in the UK.
Your assumption that enough people would change their vote (or non-vote if they didn't turn out previously) based on this to make a difference, I think is unlikely to be correct. People complain a lot about public services when they don't work well, but seldom consider (or do but seldom prioritise them) them at the ballot box.
Sure, let’s close down all libraries and all public services for that matter. Let the public feel the pain. They will understand and vote better next time, right?
You think it is lack of information that got people to vote for this nonsense?
No restaurant can “guarantee” that you won’t die from eating their food, but that doesn’t mean anything goes in the kitchen.
If we are going to use an SA analogy, this is closer to the recent case of a hotel chain where there were several instances of staff giving “randoms” keys to rooms that they should not have. Best practise procedures were not being followed, the ne'er-do-wells took advantage of this, someone else suffered as a result.
If we were being consistent, then to your later question, yes. But pointing this out is picking at society's reverse scale.
You are aware that personal information is routinely stored in places that you can break into with a literal brick to smash a window? Somehow its only computers where people turn off their brains and argue that proactive measures need to be 100% effective at blocking all attacks no matter how high the cost.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone say they should be 100% effective. Even those physical locations follow some physical security practices. The difference is that computers can be attacked from literally anywhere in the world, and good luck finding the people who did it.
Ok. Where are the criminals who did this?