STANDARD BLADE B R I G H T O N
SERVING THE COMMUNITY SINCE 1903
75cI
VOLUME 119
Issue 41
WEEK OF OCTOBER 13, 2022
Cyberattacks hit multiple communities
HUG FOR THE CHAMP
State of Colorado sees homepage taken down by foreign entity BY PAOLO ZIALCITA AND MATT MORET COLORADO PUBLIC RADIO
Riverdale Ridge’s Bradley Weinmaster gets the winner’s hug after capturing the 4A boys state golf championship in Windsor Oct. 4. PHOTO BY STEVE SMITH See our coverage on page 9.
Housing, drug addiction prove to be root of motor vehicle thefts BY LUKE ZARZECKI LZARZECKI@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
Michael Rutherford’s forearm tattoo reads “Family.” “It’s the family you hope for, not the family you were born with,” he said. He found that family in Colorado. He’s a successful chef working fulltime while going to school to earn a degree in human services, concentrating in addiction and a secondary in trauma. The degree feels very personal to
him. He wants to work with people through counseling to help them with their drug problems. Not that long ago, he was on the other side, caught by the police and charged with the theft of a motor vehicle — just one part of the rising wave of crime in the state. As in Rutherford’s case, motor vehicle theft is often paired with other underlying problems and situations. For the most part, motor vehicle thefts are a result of housing and drug addiction, according to Lisa
LOCAL VOICES OBITUARIES SPORTS CLASSIFIEDS LEGALS
A common situation The Common Sense Institute, SEE THEFT, P16
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Pasko, an associate professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver. “We see people stealing cars in order to get money, but also stealing cars to live in for some time,” she said. “We will also see a correlation with methamphetamine abuse in the winter months.”
LOCAL
2 6 • Friends see police 7 officer’s memoir through 9 to print 20 22 • Page 2
SPORTS • Softball playoffs loom
• Page 9
After ransomware disrupted the government services of multiple Colorado communities earlier this year, state officials warned that cybercrime is on the rise. That alert rang true on Oct. 5 when a cyberattack from a foreign entity took down Colorado.gov, the homepage for the state’s online services. The attack seems to be limited to the main directory page, with state services still available through their individual websites. There’s currently no timeline for the homepage’s restoration. A Russian-speaking group known as Killnet claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s website outages in a post on Telegram, an instant messaging service that’s grown in popularity outside the United States. The “hacktivist” group ramped up its activity in NATO countries after Russia invaded Ukraine. This latest attack also took down government websites in other states, including Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky and Mississippi. Some of those pages are now back online. A spokesperson for the Governor’s Office of Information Technology declined to comment on the attack Thursday due to the ongoing criminal investigation. It’s unclear whether the attack came with a ransom demand. That would put the state in a situation familiar to several local governments in Colorado that have faced multimillion-dollar extortion attempts in order to restore their SEE SECURITY, P17
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