Matanuska Susitna Borough Forced to Use Typewriters After a Hack!

Arthur Martin Editor POW Report Editorial,

Matanuska Susitna, a borough in the Anchorage Metropolitan Statistical Area with a population of just below 107,000, declared a disaster on Tuesday after it was hit by what Eric Wyatt, the IT director, claimed was a combination of the worst malware strains in the world.

Nearly all of the 500 workstations, running either Windows 7 or Windows 10, were affected and 120 of the 150 servers were hit as well. Wyatt said recovery would easily take three weeks.

"All of the pieces of this are the absolute worst in the world and they've all been combined together and put on us," Wyatt said in a PR video put out by the borough.

The borough's computers, servers, telephones and email exchange were hit by the malware which also affected the city of Valdez in the state. The email system, running on Microsoft Exchange, is said to be unrecoverable and will need to be rebuilt from scratch. [...]

According to Wyatt, the malware had lain dormant in the borough's systems since at least 3 May. "The FBI reports that the trojan (Emotet) and the worm (BitPaymer) will lay dormant for four to six weeks and then the Crypto Locker component is frequently launched on a Friday.

"This happened in Valdez and there are reports that on Friday (27 July) multiple other locations in Alaska and around the US were hit."

This is exactly the dangers of moving to a cashless system that 'they' (whoever 'they' is) are constantly trying to push. When more and more of our lives are forced on the internet, we become more vulnerable to hacking, viruses and wiping out our online bank accounts.

Local cities are famous for having poor security because they are typically always under budget and don't have dedicated internet security staff that actually know what they are doing.

Talking About Typewriters, Do you know why the QWERTY keyboard was invented?

In 1875, Christopher Sholes with assistance from Amos Densmore rearranged the typewriter keyboard so that the commonest letters were not so close together and the type bars would come from opposite directions. Thus they would not clash together and jam the machine. The new arrangement was the "QWERTY" arrangement that typists use today.

The new arrangement was the "QWERTY" arrangement that typists use today. Of course, Sholes claimed that the new arrangement was scientific and would add speed and efficiency. The only efficiency it added was to slow the typist down, since almost any word in the English language required the typist's fingers to cover more distance on the keyboard.

The advantages of the typewriter outweighed the disadvantages of the keyboard. Typists memorized the crazy letter arrangement, and the typewriter became a huge success. [Source]

So basically, the keyboard we use suck and are antiquated just like Matanuska's software programs!