[1st-mile-nm] Website of New Mexico Public Regulation Commission hacked

[Richard Lowenberg]

Website of New Mexico Public Regulation Commission hacked

By Michael Gerstein
Jan 14, 2020, Updated Jan 15, 2020

https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/website-of-new-mexico-public-regulation-commission-hacked/article_ebb089ee-36ff-11ea-861a-9ba5cf449aac.html

A state agency that regulates public utilities in New Mexico was “hacked 
by an outside source,” Public Regulation Commission chief of staff Jason 
Montoya and the Governor’s Office said Tuesday.

Montoya said the commission’s preliminary findings indicate the source 
might have been a foreign country, although Nora Meyers Sackett, a 
spokeswoman for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, said there is not yet any 
confirmation about who or what entity hacked into the PRC’s website, 
which has been down since Thursday.

The cyberbreach is under investigation by the New Mexico Department of 
Information Technology and a third-party contractor called RiskSense. 
Montoya said the commission believes the hack “could be related to a 
cyberattack.”

It’s unclear whether any confidential information was leaked.

Sackett said the Department of Information Technology “was immediately 
notified of the hack by the PRC and immediately began to quarantine it, 
address it and investigate it.”

The Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management also was 
alerted, she said.

The state Economic Development Department’s website also was down for a 
short time Tuesday morning but came back online. A department spokesman 
said there was a problem with the website server that was resolved.

Sackett said the website was down due to routine server maintenance. It 
was unrelated to the PRC hack, she said.

Earlier this year, a data breach at Presbyterian Healthcare Services 
allowed unauthorized access to the of personal information of more than 
180,000 patients and health plan members.

The May data breach allowed hackers access to names, dates of birth, 
Social Security numbers and other information.

The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office secured $2.3 million of a $175 
million portion of a settlement stemming from a 2017 Equifax data breach 
that impacted more than 860,000 state residents.

Nationwide, millions of people had their personal information exposed 
after the Equifax leak.

The Attorney General’s Office has asked lawmakers this year for about 
$500,000 to create a new cybercrime and counterterrorism unit that would 
help law enforcement agencies across the state pinpoint threats.

In November, Attorney General Hector Balderas told a panel of lawmakers 
the state’s domestic terrorism and cybercrime laws are woefully outdated 
and need to be rewritten to give prosecutors and investigators more 
tools to deal with threats from mass shooters and protect against 
cyberattacks.



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Richard Lowenberg, Executive Director
1st-Mile Institute     505-603-5200
Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504,
rl at 1st-mile.org     www.1st-mile.org
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