Tag: ransomware

Proof Of An Underworked IT Department

I wanted to repost this a stand-alone post so nobody missed it way at the end of the previous post. I find it fitting that I post this on the two year anniversary of hackers wrecking about $40,000 of City equipment in a massive ransomware attack.

Hopefully, City council will read this thoroughly before acquiescing to Finley’s ridiculous suggestion that we need a combination “IT/Communications” person on the payroll. Trust me – the IT Department is underworked as it is.

The Story of an Underworked IT Department

About three years ago, when I was stewing about the IT Department blowing almost $100,000 on an A/V system for City council, I was contacted by a former City employee – a guy who worked under Monica in the job that Kristy Acevedo currently holds. I’ll call him Mister X. I met him for lunch in Round Rock as I had a hell of a lot of questions for him.

Here is the gist of what he told me:

#1 – Monica is wildly unqualified. The guy who was Monica’s underling BEFORE Mister X apparently quit because he couldn’t stand the fact that his “boss” didn’t know what she was doing. Apparently he left for a nice career in the private sector. This was about the same time I decided to file Open Records Requests for all of Monica’s certifications. She had none of the certs you would expect for an “IT Department Head”. If our IT Department head was more skilled, we likely wouldn’t be hiring TSM and other “consultants” all the time to actually do the work that needs doing.

#2 – Mister X told me that during his time with the City as Monica’s “network admin”, she was forced to take a leave of absence for family reasons for a couple of weeks. I know this is true because I know the circumstances behind it. So basically, Mister X was left on his own for several weeks AND he was still fairly new to the job.

One of the IT Department’s main jobs is “taking tickets” and completing whatever task is on them. For instance, the library may “write a ticket” saying they have a laptop that isn’t working and then either Monica or her underling go over there and try to solve the problem. This is probably 90% of their work. They get tickets from other departments (police, fire, library, City Hall administration, etc) and go solve the problem. In this way, you can see how they spend their time and how many tasks they completed.

Well, as it turns out, while Monica was gone and Mister X was in charge, he was absolutely FLYING through all the tickets. No tickets ever piled up and he was making short work of everything. Mind you, he was doing HIS job AND Monica’s job by himself.

Mister X told me that Monica did NOT like this development at all. She told him point blank to slow down and stop being so fast and efficient (I am paraphrasing here). She told him that she needed the network admin job to look harder and more complex because she wanted to add yet another employee to her “department” (sound familiar??) and that would be hard to do if ONE GUY was currently able to handle all the tickets thrown at him.

Let me repeat that: when Monica took a couple weeks off, the new guy was SO fast and efficient that Monica actually told him to slow it down because (a) it made her look bad and (b) it would hurt her case to Finley that she needed to hire another underling!!!

Now, you may call this hearsay. Maybe Mister X made ALL this up for no reason. Perhaps, but I don’t see why he would. Luckily, I have other evidence of Monica acting in a devious and self-serving way, so it makes me think that Mister X’s story is true as well. If it came down to it, I suppose we could always track down Mister X and get him to admit it again.

Now, why do I think the story is true? (Besides the fact that I have seen the IT Department incompetence for myself?). Because this isn’t the first time Monica pulled a sneaky stunt to serve her own interests. I have actual emails written by Monica during the A/V debacle that show she was trying to HIDE the true cost of the bloated system from City council.

To wit:

New Info Emerges From City Hall Emails – Did City Manager and IT Director Deliberately Keep City Council in the Dark Over Exorbitant Cost of A/V System?

Here are some excerpts:

“Monica Wright SPECIFICALLY discouraged Anelundi from giving any hard numbers during his council presentation on March 13, 2017…going so far as to write in her email: “as far as budget numbers go, we won’t mention that to City Council Monday night” then adding that “the City Manager wants Council to know what all is involved with this project….if they know the capabilities of the A/V system, the components and equipment needed to achieve what we want, hopefully their jaw will not drop when we ask for approval.”

“When the time came in July 2018 to actually go and ask for the ludicrous sum Azbell wanted for this vanity project, Monica appeared to have reservations about the cost again, writing in an email to Anelundi: “I am hoping they just award the contract and move on“

These emails were written by Monica herself. I had to hire a lawyer and make a lot of noise to get them. I’m sure Monica never thought those emails would see the light of day and I’m sure that now that I’m on the scene, they are all a LOT more careful with what they type onto City email servers. But as you can see, the damage is done.

City council: just say NO to Finley’s request for another IT worker. If you REALLY want to improve the department, fire Monica Wright, make Acevedo the IT specialist (no department title) and pay her a little bit more. If something is beyond her abilities, pay TSM to do it.

In other words, the exact same situation we have now but without the $103,000 cost of having Monica Wright sit at her desk all day typing emails and changing printer cartridges.

We Are in the 1% – Yay!

As many Lampassholes on Facebook were griping today about their utility bills being wrong or non-existent due to the 10-day computer outage from the recent attack, one dunce named Melissa Johnson wrote “well, you can’t really rag on the IT Department about that…after all, 20 other cities got hacked”.

I guess that is one way to look at it.

A better and more accurate way to look at it would be to say “well, 2000 other towns DIDN’T get attacked – thus 99% of the towns in Texas managed to keep their systems secured”.

But that’s just me.

Talbert Administration 2.0 Off To A Very Rough Start

Poor Misti is off to quite a rough start during her second term as mayor:

Her $1,500,000.00 Old City Hall vanity project appears to STILL not be completed (which means the $95,000 “Ferrari of A/V systems” sits unused). I have yet to see a puff piece about the finished product in the local paper and the City continues to have “community meetings” at the school cafeteria and old council chambers.

She has recently jacked taxes up to just under the rollback rate, on TOP of the increase in valuations….meaning everyone will see a nice big tax increase this year. Again.

The “business park” weed patch on which they have wasted over $1,000,000.00 was at least hidden under a rug for the last 6 years, but then recently somebody went and dumped a dead body there and brought it onto the front pages – an ugly reminder of a failed dream. Now they are scrambling again to figure out exactly what they are going to do with that albatross around their neck:

“Business Park” vision as sold to the public about six years ago…and yes, they had an ‘artists rendition’ drawn up for this.



“Business Park” reality after over $1 million dollars were wasted on it: a weed patch where a woman’s corpse was recently dumped by her killer.

.…and now this embarrassing ransomware attack on the city’s network (which took 10 days to resolve). A network run by two city workers I have pointed out as unqualified for over a year, a fact which Misti and Spinley unfortunately ignored.

What will our intrepid mayor face next? Huge cost overruns on the wastewater plant? Locusts? Plummeting sales tax revenue during the coming recession?? We shall see…..

Ransomware Attack Confirmed By City

It’s official.

According to Assistant City Manager Gary Cox, “the City of Lampasas is one of 22 entities which was affected by a ransomware attack that occurred last Friday.  The matter is under investigation by federal law enforcement authorities at this time.”

Wow.

No word on the amount of “ransom” demanded by the perpetrators. I’m sure the Dispatch and Radiogram will be all over this with the details soon (right guys?).

How much are they demanding, if anything? Will the city pay up? Will any heads roll in the IT Department or City Hall for this colossal screw-up?

Stay tuned.

Contacts at State Level Tell Me Lampasas WAS Hit By Malicious Computer Attacks

The birdies are chirping too loudly for me to ignore now. I am told by well-placed sources at the state level that Lampasas WAS on the list of cities hit by the malicious cyber attacks last Friday.

If true, this is a HUGE black eye for City Manager Finley DeGraffenried and our TWO IT ‘experts’ Monica Wright and Kristy Acevedo. For a department which sucks up $300,000 $374,000 per year of the city budget, it is highly embarrassing and unacceptable. I love hate to say “I told you so”, but I did tell you so….about 50 times over the last 12 months: our IT Department is an overpaid, under-qualified joke – and now the city is AGAIN paying the price.

There are plenty of clues that I am correct. The most glaring is that even though the attacks happened last Friday the 16th, Finley stated in yesterday’s Radiogram (four days later) that the problem “is being corrected”.

Not “corrected”….but BEING corrected…as in, still NOT corrected.

When a computer problem is not solved four days later, it tells me that either (1) somebody is holding them hostage and they are locked out of their own systems or (2) it is so bad that even the expensive outside REAL computer experts are having trouble figuring it out – which means a LOT of billable hours at about $150 per hour, I’m guessing.

Lampasas City Offices Go Offline On Exact Same Day as Texas Ransomware Attacks…Hmmmmmm

As previously reported, around 20 to 23 cities were hit last Friday August 16th by malware/ransomware attacks. On the EXACT SAME DAY, City of Lampasas offices were reported to go offline.

According to the Radiogram, City Manager Finley DeGraffenried assures us that “a series of unrelated incidences [sic] caused the Lampasas County Sheriff’s Department, the Lampasas City Police Department AND the Lampasas City Utilities Department to go offline last Friday. He stated that technicians were called in, and that the problem is being corrected.”

Well, that is one hell of a coincidence.

I have directly emailed City Manager DeGraffenried AND his assistant Gary Cox to either confirm or deny that this was related to the statewide attacks last Friday. They have not responded.

I DO have a few questions and observations, however:

  • The “problem” (singular) is being corrected? You just said it was a series of unrelated incidences [sic] (plural). Which is it?
  • What was the “problem”, exactly? Did somebody spill coffee on multiple keyboards in multiple departments at the exact same time?
  • Why did “technicians” need to be called in? We have TWO highly paid Information Systems “experts” in a $300,000-per-year IT Department who supposedly handle this kind of thing, no? Who were these technicians? TSM Consulting? Camp Mabry? How much did THAT cost to fix? Is it fixed? Sounds like it isn’t….birdies are chirping right now on Tuesday evening telling me the systems are STILL down.

I look forward to answers to all of these questions, but unfortunately I expect the City to be evasive about the true nature and scope of the problem – seeing as how I have been harping on their IT Department for over a year now. They would love nothing less than to see me proved right.