Kansas City Scout systems down following cyberattack
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A critical service for drivers in the Kansas City area is experiencing a widespread outage on Thursday due to a cyberattack.
Kansas City Scout says its systems went down early in the morning, including its website, traffic camera network and message boards around the area. A spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Transportation told FOX4 that systems were taken offline immediately to limit any damage from the attack. The nature of the attack hasn’t been specified.
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There’s currently no timeline for restoration, but KC Scout says staff is working to make it happen as soon as possible.
In the meantime, you can get real-time traffic conditions on FOX4’s interactive map.
You can check on driving conditions across Kansas via KanDrive. In Missouri you can check conditions across the state with MoDOT’s traveler map, but it won’t have information for the Kansas City area due to the Scout outage.
You can also call (888) 275-6636 for traffic information in Kansas City.
“This has been happening for a long time. this isn’t actually very new but there are compliance frameworks that have been put in place where people now have to report these things,” Taner Shinn said, the principal security engineer at Alias Cyber Security.
Sadly, we know about that all too well. Just this month a cyber attack halted business within the Jackson County government.
Liberty hospital late last year was also a target. They were down for weeks.
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The entire court system in the state of Kansas with the exception of Johnson County, shut down for months.
Municipal court systems in Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas, both forced to close their doors due to cyber criminals and the list goes on.
Tanner Shinn said a vast majority of these attacks are foreign in nature.
So while we’re aware of more attacks Shinn says that’s a good thing. He says the average person is finally in the know of what’s really going on.
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“Things are improving especially with these frameworks being put into place. People are being held accountable so whenever they have a breech, they have to address it and fix it instead of just sweeping it under the rug,” Shinn said.
The question is what can you do? Well Shinn says for the most part we’re at the liberty of these entities but he says it’s critically important that your things are secured by doing things such as two factor authentication.
