Issued by Suffolk County Clerk at 3:29 PM Sept.30, 2022
SCCO Alerts<Sccoalerts@suffolkcountyny.gov>
As
many of you know, we have asked those examiners in the building to test
our new computer configurations in the Public
Access room with the goal of being ready to go live Monday at 8:00
a.m. We have been working closely with the County Executive and the
Governor’s office to make sure we have the necessary resources to be
fully operational in a very short period of time.
In
furtherance of verifying the readiness of the new computer
configuration we are opening up testing sessions again tomorrow for a
limited
number of terminals for portions throughout the day.
We
are making 50 terminals available for a morning shift from 9:00 a.m to
12:15 p.m.. We will have a second afternoon shift from 1:00 p.m.
to 4:30 p.m.
If you are interest in helping further test during these shifts please respond to this e-mail with your:
Name Company Name E-mail Address Cell phone number
This
is available for the first 100 individuals who volunteer. The shift you
are provided will be assigned to you and can not be assigned to
another individual.
E-mails with multiple requests will not be accepted. Each individual must respond from their own e-mail address.
We
will notify you by the end of business day which session you have been
assigned to. We will notify everyone once all spots are filled.
It
is our goal to make sure the testing provides the necessary feedback we
need to help ensure a smooth official opening Monday morning. Thank
for your continued patience and cooperation as we look forward to
officially opening again Monday morning.
Over the last several days we have been working hard to bring back the applications used to perform title searches. Our IT staff, along with the County IT staff,
have worked around the clock to get us to the point where can open our office for searching Monday at 8:00 a.m.
We will have roughly 120 terminals available throughout the Clerk’s Office for searches to be conducted. At this
point we believe all of the programs you are accustom to using will be available. There are still some issues we are working out through testing which we hope to resolve over time. There are currently two printers available and we are working
towards bring additional ones online.
What to expect.
Please expect the system to be slower than you may be accustom to. We know this to be an issue and are working in the background to alleviate the issue over time.
While we believe there will we sufficient work stations available, in
the event there is not, we ask that you be respectful and allow others access when you know the terminal will not be used for a period of time. We understand the demands being placed on you and the amount of work that has accumulate over the last
two weeks. It is important we all work together.
The building will be open near normal business hours to start as we assess our computer equipment capacity and provide necessary maintenance. It is our goal to increase business hours once
we confirm the computer environment can handle the increased volume of use.
Your cards will be required to print and you may add funds to them by filling out the attached form and leaving it with the Public Access counter staff. We will
add the funds to your cards throughout the day starting Friday so they will be available for use Monday morning. Payments need to be made by check and we can add funds to only one card per check (in the short term). This form will also be available
at the counter by the printers.
As for recordings and other related filings, our staff will be working towards getting our systems up to once again provide those services. I do not have any timeframe that can be provided but please be
assured we are working as hard and fast as possible to get those functions up and running soon. We will provide further details as we progress.
We appreciate your patience as we work through this difficult and unprecedented situation.
We are sure by working collectively and with respect for one another we will get through this period and return to “normal” in due course.
Suffolk County on Long Island joined the ranks of those hit by a ransomware attack, and the results and impact are not surprising. One headline on September 13 somewhat said it all: “County IT systems crippled, with websites, email down, five days after discovery of cyberattack.”
By yesterday, county officials were working to send out paper checks to pay county vendors, with Newsday reporting that nonprofits contracted to perform social services were a high priority for payment.
Then a ransomware team stepped out of the shadows to claim responsibility for the attack. Variously called ALPHV or “BlackCat,” they issued a post on their dark web leak site:
The Suffolk County Government was attacked. Along with the government network, the networks of several contractors were encrypted as well.
Due to the fact that Suffolk County Government and the aforementioned companies are not communicating with us, we are publishing sample documents extracted from the government and contractor network.
The total volume of extracted files exceeds 4TB.
Extracted files include Suffolk County Court records, sheriff’s office records, contracts with the State of New York and other personal data of Suffolk County citizens. We also have huge databases of Suffolk County citizens extracted from the clerk.county.suf.
domain in the county administration.
The post was accompanied by screencaps of various files that appear to have been exfiltrated from county systems.
BlackCat added Suffolk County to their leak site. Redacted by DataBreaches.net
Visitors to the county’s website today will see this notice:
Following an alert of unusual activity on Thursday September 8th, 2022, out of an abundance of caution the County took aggressive containment measures, which included taking email and web-based services offline.
Below you will find contact information for the County’s various departments and agencies. For general inquiries please call Suffolk County 311 by dialing 311 or 631-853-6311.
The New York State Land Title Association, Inc. advances the common interests of all those engaged in the business of abstracting, examining, insuring titles, and otherwise facilitating real estate transactions. The Association promotes the business
and general welfare of its Members and protects real property title holders’ ownership rights.
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