Oct. 10, 2013
Days after one of the City of Wichita’s websites is hacked, a group of professional hackers from Turkey claim that they’re the one’s responsible for the security breach.
The group calls themselves the Agent Hacker Group,
Online, they’ve Tweeted “City of Wichita Hacked” and continue with a photo message.
“Since today you have been trying to bring the middle east under chaos, united states of America,” the note states. “You are a country which bombs it’s own state, kills its own citizens, and blames the Muslim for it.”
At the bottom of the screen it lists several cities, including Akron, Lansing, Mobile and Wichita and then says “to be continued.”
“The fact that it was someone outside the country doesn’t surprise me at all,” said Chris Owen, owner of Hubris Communications, a web development company in Wichita. “When you design something like this, you have to assume that something like this is eventually going to happen.”
The city confirmed that over the weekend, someone illegally obtained Social Security Numbers, banking information and other data involving vendors, current and former Wichita employees.
As many as 29,000 people could be affected, including Owen, who is a vendor with the City of Wichita. He’s more worried for employees, who have the most information exposed.
“With them, it’s not the banking information per se,” he said. “It’s the combination of the banking information, address information and Social Security Number. I think it’s more of an identity theft problem than it is an immediate banking problem.”
Owen says the city could have softened the blow by adding extra security measures. He expects most of these city websites used a similar software or developer, making them vulnerable to a mass hacking.
He said the city should have deleted old data in the system — something he encourages his clients to do regularly.