More than 20,000 records from eight cities across the United States have been compromised in a new wave of Click2Gov breaches, Gemini Advisory reports.
Developed by Superion (now CentralSquare Technologies), Click2Gov provides cities with a self-service bill-pay portal for utilities, community development, and parking tickets.
Breaches at Click2Gov customers were first spotted in October 2017, and security researchers said last year that they were performed by a previously unknown threat actor.
In December last year, Gemini Advisory said that over 300,000 payment card records from dozens of cities across the United States and Canada were compromised in a breach at Click2Gov between 2017 and late 2018.
Now, the company reveals that over 20,000 records from eight cities in five different states have been compromised in a new wave of attacks that started in August 2019. Cardholders in all 50 states were affected, as many remotely transacted with the Click2Gov portal in affected cities.
Six of these cities were compromised in the initial breach as well. Although many of the cities impacted in the initial attack patched their systems to prevent future compromise, attackers have found new means to breach them, it seems.
“Analysts confirmed that many of the affected towns were operating patched and up-to-date Click2Gov systems but were affected nonetheless. Given the success of the first campaign, which generated over $1.9 million in illicit revenue, the threat actors would likely have both the motive and the budget to conduct a second Click2Gov campaign,” Gemini says.
Gemini says they attempted to contact several of the eight towns about the attacks and that most did not respond. Those that did, however, confirmed that their Click2Gov utility payment portals were breached. Others took the portals offline although they did not respond to Gemini’s outreach.
The new wave of attacks shows that despite patched systems, the Click2Gov portal remains vulnerable and that cybercriminals are willing to repeatedly target the same victims. Thus, organizations are advised to regularly monitor systems for breaches and to always keep up to date on patches.
Related: Click2Gov Attacks on U.S. Cities Attributed to Previously Unknown Group