An and -mil notification system used by the Federal and State State Government Departments to notify the residents of important information was used to send and -mail of scam, Techcrunch has learned.
The American state of Indiana declared Tuesday which is “aware of the fraudulent messages presumably sent by state agencies” to residents on unpaid tolls. Techcrunch saw an e -mail message sent by a Department of the Indiana government that said that the recipient had a suspended toll balance and contained a masked connection that redirected to a harmful site.
A declaration of the Indiana technology office said that “she was working with the company that was used to deliver those messages to stop any further communication”.
Indiana said that the account of a contractor was violated and used to send the scam messages. The state said not to be aware of the fact that the “current state systems” are compromised, but has not excluded a previous violation.
The declaration states that the contract with the unpleasant company, which Techcrunch has learned is the giant of Govtech Granicus, ended in December 2024, but the state stated that the company “did not remove the state account”.
When it was reached for a comment, the spokesman for the Granicus Sharon Rushen said to Techcrunch: “We are aware of the recent and -immous damages sent through Govddey from the domain of the Indiana government”. The company confirmed that the violation was caused by a compromised user account, but did not comment on the statements of Indiana.
“The granicus systems themselves were not violated,” said Rushen. To the question, the company claimed to have the technical means to determine how many people received the harmful e -mails, but did not immediately provide a figure of affected people.
Other local governments also report issues relating to the delivery of the government. As a question about this, Granicus said that the company has “seen an increase in targeted social engineering of customers delivering the Govddivery with the aim of sending and -ars harmful through Govddvel delivery systems”.
False toll messages are an increasingly common scam, as the Federal Trade Commission in January warned. The scam provides for the sending of text and -email messages that claim that recipients owe money to toll agencies in the United States. Taking the e-mail systems used by governments to notify the public, the scammers hope that the victims have the greater chances of opening e-mails from the official aspect.
A person who received the scam message shared the E -mail with Techcrunch. The scam e -mail was sent by an official address and -face of the government of the Indiana associated with the state operating center of the state, which coordinates the answers and notices in the event of a natural disaster or other emergency events. The E -mail said that the recipient has had non -paid tolls in Texas and that “failure to pay can involve penalties or recording sockets of vehicles”.
The scam e -mail contained a link, which appears as an officer govdelivery.com Web address, but when it was clicking redirected to a harmful site that impersonates the website of the Toll collection service of the Texas Transport Department, TXTAG.
The Scam website has tried to induce users to deliver their personal information, such as their name, the phone number, the home address and the details of the credit card. The site (and another clone site hosted in a similar domain) seemed offline from Tuesday morning on the eastern coast of the United States.
A spokesman for the Indiana government did not comment immediately.
The county of Doña Ana in New Mexico also confirmed Tuesday that its news portal, managed by Granicus, was compromised. The IT director of County Kent English described the compromise as a “issue at the system level that affects other government customers”.
Techcrunch saw an e -mail, provided by a reader, who originated from a govdelivery.com Address e -mail associated with the county of Doña Ana, but the content impersonates a professional service company that included a connection to a scam site that asked for a payment.
A spokesman for the county of Doña Ana did not respond to a commentary request.
Updated with further details on the delivery problem of the Govddivery affecting more customers and additional comments from Granicus.
