Category Archives: Technology, science, and math

Lots of people were affected by that Dallas ransomware attack

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Not great. Computer hackers accessed the personal information of at least 26,212 Texans in a ransomware attack on the city of Dallas, according to an official disclosure made public Monday, three months after the breach. The city’s notice to the … Continue reading →

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The Harris Health System data breach

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

While a lot of the cybersecurity incidents that I’ve been tracking here could have been prevented by the entities that suffered them, this is an exception. And also a reminder. Patient information was exposed in a cyberattack that affected the Harris Health … Continue reading →

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HCA Healthcare hacked

Posted on July 17, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

A national breach with Houston connections. HCA Healthcare, which operates more than a dozen hospitals in the Houston area, announced that personal information from as many as 11 million patients nationwide has been stolen in a data breach and could be sold … Continue reading →

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Malaria

Posted on July 8, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Time for something new to worry about. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning doctors and public health officials about a handful of locally acquired cases of malaria. There hasn’t been a case of malaria caught locally … Continue reading →

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On destigmatizing UFOs

Posted on July 3, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I agree with this. NASA wants to remove the stigma around reporting and researching UFOs. During a public meeting on Wednesday, NASA said its 16-member team of independent experts had been harassed for helping create a strategy to better categorize … Continue reading →

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Fort Worth data exposure

Posted on July 2, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This one is a little different. A hacker group has leaked internal data from the City of Fort Worth’s online systems, city officials announced Saturday. The city was notified around 4 p.m. Friday a group called SiegedSec had downloaded data … Continue reading →

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Off to “Mars”

Posted on July 2, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Good luck, y’all. Nathan Jones wondered if his family could play Uno with an up to 22-minute communications delay — each way. Ross Brockwell convinced a lifelong friend to manage his miscellaneous affairs, and Kelly Haston stockpiled videos of friends … Continue reading →

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Dallas improves its cybersecurity

Posted on June 30, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Good to see. The Dallas City Council approved a nearly $4 million deal Wednesday to get a new system that alerts the city’s information technology department of possible cyber attacks. The approval comes as the city is nearly two months … Continue reading →

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Add Stephen F. Austin University to the list of recent cyberattack victims

Posted on June 27, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Not a lot of detail here, but these things are never good. More than a week after Stephen F. Austin State University was hit with a cyberattack, leaders at the public university in the East Texas Pineywoods are still working … Continue reading →

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COVID immunity update

Posted on June 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Fascinating stuff. Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, were present in the blood of 96.4% of Americans over the age of 16 by September 2022. That’s according to a serosurvey – an analysis testing for the presence of these immune defense molecules … Continue reading →

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Pearland ISD data breach

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I don’t mean for this sort of thing to become my beat, but it is very much of interest to me, and should be of interest to you. Pearland ISD has notified current and former students that their private information … Continue reading →

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A more general look at ransomware attacks

Posted on June 5, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This WaPo story, which I found by googling around for more news on the Dallas ransomware attack, has some great general information on this recent plague, which I thought you’d find useful as well. The ransomware attacks that pose a … Continue reading →

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Yet another Dallas ransomware update

Posted on May 29, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

We’re three weeks out, how are things going? Three weeks after Dallas was hit with a ransomware attack, city officials still haven’t publicly explained the full scope of the breach or the city’s progress toward restoration. The ransomware attack hit May … Continue reading →

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Dallas data leak threatened by ransomware attackers

Posted on May 21, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Not good. An online blog post by a group claiming responsibility for Dallas’ ransomware attack says a leak of employees’ personal information and other data stored by the municipal government will happen soon. In the post Friday, Royal noted the … Continue reading →

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And another Dallas ransomware update

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Recovery is a long and painful process. In the immediate aftermath, the attack forced the city to take offline the police and fire department’s computer-aided dispatch system, the police department’s website and the city’s website. The city also closed its … Continue reading →

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Another Dallas ransomware update

Posted on May 11, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

More specific info, but still a lot we don’t know. Dallas’ top information technology official says the city hasn’t found any signs yet that personal information from employees or residents have been leaked after a cyberattack last week. Bill Zielinski, … Continue reading →

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FDA approves RSV vaccine

Posted on May 11, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Good. After a 60-year scientific quest, the world has its first vaccine to protect against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV – and more are on the way. On Wednesday, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Arexvy, made by GSK, … Continue reading →

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Dallas ransomware update

Posted on May 10, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

As of the weekend, things still weren’t great. A ransomware attack from a prolific group called Royal has caused outages for many of Dallas’ systems for the past three days. Websites remained down and first responders continued to rely on … Continue reading →

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City of Dallas hit by ransomware attack

Posted on May 5, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

A bad day for them. The city of Dallas said Wednesday afternoon they found a number of their servers compromised with ransomware. The city’s security monitoring tools notified the Security Operations Center of the ransomware attack, the city said, and … Continue reading →

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So yeah, climate change is bad for Houston

Posted on April 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Some science for you. As Houston continues to grapple with extreme weather conditions, scientists find record-breaking sea level rises in the U.S. Gulf Coast, which could leave cities such as Houston more vulnerable to severe storms and flooding in the coming decades than previously … Continue reading →

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Well, the moon could use the oxygen

Posted on April 10, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

If you write a story about a Houston firm proposing to build an oxygen pipeline on the moon, I will read it. A Houston company might build an oxygen pipeline on the moon, enabling NASA to transport a key ingredient … Continue reading →

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On recycling cooking oil

Posted on April 9, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I’m always intrigued by stories like this. NRG Stadium is no stranger to fried food — like the booths upon booths of deep-fried desserts that line NRG Park during the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, or the churros and corn … Continue reading →

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Meet your new astronauts

Posted on April 8, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Very cool. NASA and the Canadian Space Agency announced the four astronauts who will be onboard the Artemis II mission around the moon yesterday at an event at Ellington Field near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The 10-day mission … Continue reading →

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The drones of Pearland

Posted on March 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I mean, we’ll see. Certainly the Pearland Police Department will see lots of things. Pearland’s police department has become the nation’s first law enforcement agency to win Federal Aviation Administration approval to use a system in which drones controlled from … Continue reading →

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So about that DPS delay in notifying the victims of the credential stuffing attack

Posted on March 2, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Here’s their explanation. [DPS Director Steve] McCraw said DPS officials kept the news under wraps to avoid jeopardizing the agency’s investigation, including efforts to arrest the fraudsters who organized the scheme. The explanation came in response to questioning from state … Continue reading →

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DPS victimized by credential stuffing attack

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

That’s the technical term for this. The Texas Department of Public Safety was duped into shipping at least 3,000 Texas driver’s licenses to a Chinese organized crime group that targeted Asian Texans, DPS Director Steve McCraw told a Texas House … Continue reading →

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The fentanyl vaccine

Posted on February 22, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This is not actually new, but this story just came out and I hadn’t noticed the coverage before, so I’m catching up. To combat the fentanyl epidemic in the United States, researchers at the University of Houston have created a … Continue reading →

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Mammoths and dodos

Posted on February 12, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

How you feel about this will likely depend on how strongly you identify with that Ian Malcolm quote from Jurassic Park. The Texas entrepreneur working to bring back the woolly mammoth has added a new species to his revival list: … Continue reading →

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DCAD’s ransomware experience

Posted on February 11, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

A story of great interest to me. On Election Day 2022, Dallas County Chief Appraiser Ken Nolan and his staff showed up for work, but there was an unexpected problem. Nothing worked. The Dallas Central Appraisal District’s desktop computers, all … Continue reading →

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Can you print a house?

Posted on February 4, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

We’re gonna find out. 3D printing is taking home construction to new heights. In Houston, a giant printer is building what designers say is the first 3D-printed two-story house in the U.S. The machine has been pouring a concrete mix … Continue reading →

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FDA suggests annual COVID booster

Posted on January 26, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I like the idea of this, which is to make COVID shots simpler and thus hopefully more likely to be taken, but it seems to be more nuanced than that. The US Food and Drug Administration wants to simplify the … Continue reading →

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Hydrogen hub Houston?

Posted on January 19, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

It could happen. Houston-area leaders seeking to make the city one of the nation’s designated hydrogen hubs have received a push from the U.S. Energy Department. The department’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations received 79 “concept papers” from groups seeking … Continue reading →

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UT bans TikTok on campus WiFi

Posted on January 18, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This feels like a bit of an overreaction to me, but we’ll see if others follow suit. The University of Texas at Austin has blocked access to the video-sharing app TikTok on its Wi-Fi and wired networks in response to … Continue reading →

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More battery power coming

Posted on December 20, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Now here is something that might actually help the grid. A surge of new battery projects is expected to come online on Texas and California’s power grids, as developers seek to store the excess electricity produced by those state’s sprawling wind and solar … Continue reading →

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