St. Paul, MN, was hacked so badly that the National Guard has been deployed
St. Paul, MN, was hacked so badly that the National Guard has been deployed
arstechnica.com
St. Paul, MN, was hacked so badly that the National Guard has been deployed
66 comments
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The national guard here is looking around for men in black masks in front of computers throughout the city. Its crazy
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Is this a joke or are you serious?
Goddamn it, I can't tell anymore
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They found him
It's a joke....
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https://techxplore.com/news/2025-07-fbi-national-st-paul-cyber.html
So, this actually was first detected on Friday July 25, escalated all the way up to the Emergency Operations Center on July 28 (Monday), state of emergency / near total intranet shut down (they are quarantineing the whole system) on July 29 (Tuesday).
It seems to me that some kind of rather sophisticated threat actor managed to get into the core ... this techxplore article calls it a 'VPN', but it isn't technically a VPN, its a secure access tunnel system that city-gov systems and employees use to talk to each other, it almost certainly is not intended to be geared toward broad internet access/usage, beyond accepting user input from public facing government web portals, such as say, people paying their utliity bills online or trying to submit a business liscense application online, things like that.
This system is sounding like it got fully compromised (as in, low level/high privilege level access was secured), and was either sending data out/in through improper IP addresses, and/or was possibly being hijacked to do some kind of DOS attack ... on itself?
I am having a really hard time finding any exact details on this, but this is my best guess.
Given that the EOC essentially immediately shutdown everything and called in a National Guard Cybersecurity team, it seems to me that there is a high chance this was done by basically a nation-state level threat actor.
It also at least seems like the systems, the data, the hardware, have at least not yet been locked down in a ransomware style move, which... could be largely due to their just quickly pulling the whole thing offline, or could be because that wasn't the goal of the attackers... or some combination of both.
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but it isn’t technically a VPN
It is. Others have given some details, but I'll keep it simple.
A VPN makes remote devices seem like they're on the same network. You can have all traffic be routed through that virtual network, or just some of it. Common use cases:
- consumers - make yourself appear to be somewhere else; basically replaces old SOCKS proxies (all traffic routed)
- workplace - provide access to internal, protected resources to those that need them (only relevant traffic is routed)
- home lab - expose internal services publicly (reverse of workplace use case)
Those are all VPNs, though the first is acting more like a proxy than the others.
National Guard Cybersecurity team
This isn't some crack team of experts, it's mostly part-time soldiers who likely have a relevant day job. My brother-in-law is a mechanic at the National Guard, not because he's an expert, but because they paid for his 4-year degree and only expect a few hours of work each month. A lot of people join for inexpensive medical insurance.
This cybersecurity team is probably just a handful of locals who work in IT locally and have had training on systems commonly used by the military.
If this was a high profile attack by a state actor or something, they wouldn't call the National Guard, they'd call the NSA, CIA, or something similar, as in an actual crack team. The National Guard is mostly there to provide structure in emergencies, like organizing rescue efforts in a flood or help firefighters with labor in fighting wildfires. They're just weekend warriors, not experts.
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I guess my confusion here comes from trying to reconcile the broad, colloquial understanding of a VPN, and the actual, precise, technical definition.
When a news article runs with VPN in a wide audience usage... 95% of people think SurfShark or Nord or PIA or whatever, something that is consumer oriented, that accesses/fancy proxies the broad internet, as you give in your first example, where it basically functions as a more elaborate set of proxies than what most people could probably manage on their own.
So... yes, it technically is a type 2 VPN as you've listed, but it technically isn't a type 1 VPN, which is what 95% of people think a VPN is.
I've worked remote for a decently long while, and most other remote workers I've known... they do not have really any understanding at all that their work login thing... is fundamentally the same kind of VPN as Surfshark, just configured differently.
My goal was to emphasize this difference, but yeah, I could have used better wording.
And yes, I know as well that Nat Guard CyberSec are by no means the creme de la creme of cybersec specialists, but the fact that a top level Municipal agency went 'oh fuck' and basically escalated the issue to the next level of IT support, the State Nat. Guard... that means they got pretty fucking spooked.
Also, the FBI is involved as well, they'd be the ones to pass it up to NSA and/or Homeland Security, I think... and the Nat Guard would be the ones capable of passing it up to... Army CyberCom... and I think if it makes it up to either Army CyberCom or the NSA or Homeland Sec, well at that point, its theoretically possible that any member of the alphabet soup could be called upon, or at the very least, have it come up on someone's desk.
I am not exactly sure what the CoC of escalation pathways is here, but it seems like this got escalated to as many people as the Municipal Emergency Response Team could, quite rapidly.
Its 'the emergency response team looked at this for 24 hours and then called in another emergency response team'.
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What's Saint Paul gonna do about it?
Complain to Jesus?
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🙄
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...your lack of faith is, disturbing...
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but at least Abilene was insured against such an attack
Oh, well that's great. I hope the people, whose identity, medical records, or whatever else was stolen will be compensated accordingly. Would be a shame if the money went into building a new, just as unsafe system.
Not that anyone gives a fuck. At this point the argument is "your data had probably already been stolen somewhere else"...
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Had to read the article to realise st Paul is a city name. 😅
Also, could it be a 'the call is coming from inside the house " situation?
I remember pedo party hating this mayor. It was all over lemmy during simpler times.
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Also, could it be a 'the call is coming from inside the house " situation?
I think this is far more likely than China, North Korea, Iran or Russia having a sudden interest in St Paul Minnesota (a city that most people in the US don't even think about).
Who benefits more from the crippling of city-level liberal governments and stealing their data, Trump or China? If we see ICE conducting surgical raids within St Paul in the coming months, I think we'll have our answer.
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Probably not the mayor, the governor of the state was the VP candidate for Kamala Harris.
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Isn't there an upcoming election in St. Paul?
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Minneapolis and St Paul (Cross-River sister cities, St Paul is the State Capital) both have mayoral elections on November 4, 2025. The one you’ve been seeing mentioned more likely is the Minneapolis one where the DFL (State Democratic Party) endorsed a candidate for the first time in a bit and it was the challenger to the incumbent Democratic candidate, so it’s been in the news.
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Loving the completely unfounded speculation that it must be
EurasiaRussia orEastasiaChina in this thread.Y'all are so deep in propaganda you don't even know it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_geography_of_Nineteen_Eighty-Four
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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2kgndwwd7lo
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8vedz4yk7o
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/uk-condemns-chinese-cyber-attacks-against-businesses-governments
https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2025-january-10/
https://cybermagazine.com/articles/chinas-cyber-espionage-surges-150-says-crowdstrike
Yeah. Definitely propaganda.
You poor thing.
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Oh honey, don't you see the irony of posting the BBC and the government's cyber security centre to refute claims of propaganda?
Do you believe the most technologically advanced country in the world, with the power of silicon valley, an unlimited budget for the military and CIA, currently being run by an outright fascist, is innocent?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Olympic_Games
“We have stated our position many times regarding such groundless accusations that lack evidence,” ministry spokesperson Mao Ning was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the US, Liu Pengyu, denied the department’s allegations. “We hope that relevant parties will adopt a professional and responsible attitude when characterising cyber-incidents, basing their conclusions on sufficient evidence rather than unfounded speculation and accusations,” he said, according to a BBC report.
“The US needs to stop using cybersecurity to smear and slander China and stop spreading all kinds of disinformation about the so-called Chinese hacking threats.”
It's always China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran that is jumped to because that is the main adversaries of the west. Never India, or Brazil, or Israel, or Saudi Arabia, all capable countries. With not a shred of evidence it's always China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran that are speculated.
No speculation that perhaps Mexico and Canada, two countries currently having beef with the US could be to blame. No speculation that it's a false flag by the US federal government. No, straight to China.
When the Spanish power grid went down straight away the speculation was to Russian or Chinese hacking, investigations aren't finished yet but it appears to have been nothing of the sort, but instead frequency oscillations in the power lines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackout#Misinformation
It could very well be China etc but straight away with no evidence there's comments like "What are the chances this took place during working hours in China?".
At best it's bigoted, at worst it's U.S. sponsored Lemmy propaganda.
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Yes. There are quite a few completely unfounded pieces stating it is Russia or China or North Korea behind thing X with no proofs whatsoever.
These do not go to prove your point.
Now, there were some proven cases, but attributing every attack to one of these now without judge and jury is nothing but blatant and bold propaganda.
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We're at war with East Asia. We've always been at war with East Asia. George Orwell, 1984.
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What are the chances this took place during working hours in China?
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The article says it started on a Friday morning in Minnesota. It’s clear that that’s when the attack started and not a case of the first guy starting work that day discovering that it happened, because the article also says that they tried to contain it as it was going on, but ultimately failed.
Minnesota is at UTC-5 and China is at UTC+8, meaning when it’s morning in Minnesota, it’s already 13 hours later in China, i.e. middle of the night.
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It's probably a local.
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I don’t see anything in the article that states the attack started that morning. It says that i was “first noticed” early Friday morning:
According to remarks by St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, the attack was first noticed early in the morning of Friday, July 25.
I’m not arguing it’s China, just that I didn’t see anything indicating they know when the attack started
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Or maryland. The feds are not friends right now. Arguably ever, but definitely not right now.
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With no ransom demand it's gotta be a state actor probing defenses and testing responses, right? I think first guesses would be Russia, China, Iran or maybe North Korea.
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Or some bored teenager somewhere
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That sounds much more likely. I don't care about St. Paul and I'm American, why would China or Russia care? Also, state and city governments all handle things differently, so the only takeaway is that St Paul's IT is probably incompetent.
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...perhaps the U nited S tates should handle that...
66 comments
Oh wonderful. Replacing all IT because they were hacked? Let me guess, they will use Windows, Exchange, and MS Office again on the new system. The software triumvirate screaming "please hack me".
Project manager: at least I can blame the vendor
Entirely seriously, yes.
Most project managers I've ever met or known or worked with are basically incompetent technically, and very insecure / in denial about that, and thus vastly prefer the 'safe' option of someone else being responsible over the 'risk' of... hiring actual quality people that can make/support their own quality product.
🤣 should we get a list of foss projects that have had security issues? Or how about how someone slips some shit in upstream every few weeks it seems?
Stop this nonsense. You can hate Microsoft for legitimate reasons.
I mean... For real, I've never heard of Linux systems being hacked this way. I'm sure it's possible, but it certainly seems rarer.
Slipping shit in upstream also certainly doesn't happen "that* often. It takes effort to become recognised enough as a developer to be allowed access to the upstream code, meaning you can't automate those kinds of attacks. (I imagine. Correct me if I'm wrong.)
Microsoft is getting hacked every other week.
Mate have a look at the SharePoint vulnerability. It's embarrassingly bad. Like really really bad, and btw so bad that it's very easy to understand and exploit. And prevent too, if a jr in my team did this I'd get them in trouble.