Reading Municipal Light Department, an electric utility in Massachusetts, hit by ransomware

The Reading Municipal Light Department (RMLD), an electric utility in Massachusetts, announced it was hit by a ransomware attack.

This week, the Reading Municipal Light Department (RMLD), an electric utility in Massachusetts, announced it was hit by a ransomware attack.

Reading Municipal Light Department provides electricity to over 68,000 citizens that live in the towns of Reading, North Reading, Wilmington and Lynnfield Center.

RMLD says it serves over 68,000 residents in the towns of Reading, North Reading, Wilmington and Lynnfield Center.

The incident did not impact the supply of electricity, and according to the utility, no customer financial data were exfiltrated. Online payment systems were not impacted by the attack.

RMLD discovered the infection on February 21 and immediately operated to contain the malware and lockout the threat with the help of an external IT consultant.

RMLD did not provide information about the family of the ransomware that has infected its systems.

“On Friday, February 21, 2020, RMLD was the target of a ransomware security breach, which has been sweeping the nation.” reads the alert published on the company website.

“RMLD takes this cyber infiltration very seriously, and staff is working tirelessly to correct this issue and restore regular business operations as soon as possible,”

Customers report outages and other service issues via phone.

Ransomware attacks can pose a serious threat to organizations working in the energy industry, the US CISA agency recently disclosed another incident that affected a natural gas compression facility.

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, ransomware)

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