To the Editor:

In response to “Hack Attack Costs Ogdensburg $25,000” which appeared in the May 20-26 issue of North Country This Week: I don't recall hearing that Ogdensburg was "hit" by anything that would have corrupted and damaged computer equipment in April. I cannot find any reference to it.

What was the nature of the cyber attack? Exactly when did it happen?

I notice a lot of money being moved around to help defray the costs of recovery, but...what recovery? And from what?

Also, $25,000 is a "funny" number also for "damaged computer equipment. What computer equipment was damaged? From the wording, computers were not damaged, so that leaves things like modems and routers along with their power supplies and perhaps some UPS (backup power in the case of grid failure) equipment.

I submit that any damage in this manner was either invited by someone through an online access they made to an unsafe website, or not practicing what's known as "safe hex" in computer usage. Pornography is a good place to pick up that sort of thing, by the way, but by far not the only source! E-mail is another very likely source if any unexpected attachments were saved to disk or worse, viewed.

Which brings me to this point: E-mail and online malware protection is available via reputable sources such as Norton Security or McAfee Security, and many others, both of which protect both and have served me well for many years. Why did anything nefarious make it onto these computer systems?

Is there a viable and reliable backup system in place? In cases of Ransom-ware for instance, just re-partition and reformat drives and restore from backups.

Are computers left on 24//7? This is an excellent source of malware from what is called drive-by viruses and other malware just looking for any open unprotected port anywhere on the machine. GRC.com is an excellent website to evaluate your computer system and be told by testing they perform and you control, just how easy it is to get into that system.

I respectfully submit that the damage or whatever they think is damaged, is the result of improperly set up computer security systems.

The article is suspiciously devoid of any meaningful information to back up the claim that is being made and personally it is my opinion that these systems are/were improperly set up to be safe on today's internet.

Tom Rivet

Heuvelton