I read an article about ransomware affecting the public transportation service in Kansas, and I wanted to ask how this can happen. Wikipedia says these are “are typically carried out using a Trojan, entering a system through, for example, a malicious attachment, embedded link in a phishing email, or a vulnerability in a network service,” but how? Wouldn’t someone still have to deliberately click a malicious link to install it? Wouldn’t anyone working for such an agency be educated enough about these threats not to do so?

I wanted to ask in that community, but I was afraid this is such a basic question that I felt foolish posting it there. Does anyone know the exact process by which this typically can happen? I’ve seen how scammers can do this to individuals with low tech literacy by watching Kitboga, but what about these big agencies?

Edit: After reading some of the responses, it’s made me realize why IT often wants to heavily restrict what you can do on a work PC, which is frustrating from an end user perspective, but if people are just clicking links in emails and not following basic internet safety, then damn.

  • TheInsane42@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Yep, same here, including colleagues in security. “You haven’t claimed your giftcard yet, log in here…”. Some were ‘smart’ enough to forward the link home and open it there (no direct internet access from the desktop) and the organizers of the test canceled the test as it was such a great success. (Almost everybody failed) Alas they killed the test before the email arrived in my mailbox, as I would have loved to see it. ;)

    • Katzastrophe@feddit.de
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      9 months ago

      In my case the employer got so angry that he personally delivered invitations to a “Cybersecurity in the workplace”-course

      • TheInsane42@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        We already have an annual test and still… people will be people. This is the main reason the webbrowsers are sandboxed and everything that is downloaded is scanned. (An no direct acces to internet, never, ever)