(TNS) — Jake Trippel is the dean of the College of Business and Technology at Concordia University in St. Paul, where he also chairs the master’s program in business administration, which includes a specialty in cybersecurity.The Pioneer Press recently interviewed him about the cyberattack on the information systems for the city of St. Paul. Both the FBI and the National Guard have been called in to assist the city on the breach.The following interview with him has been edited for length and clarity.What kind of cyberattack did St. Paul suffer last week?It’s amazing what they’re not saying in terms of their phrasing, which is around “a pretty sophisticated attack.” Based on what they’re describing so far, it sounds like it could be a ransomware, but a pretty advanced version of it, that’s designed to refashion itself and is constantly morphing and evolving. As it gets detected, it evolves to evade detection. For large corporations and what we call critical infrastructure in the country, they’re dealing with this as we speak. It’s been going on for a while now.For anti-virus software, it’s able to identify what the software is, its origins, what library it’s actively running in terms of virus definitions, and then it’s programmed to change so it cannot be detected. But I’m not implying that St. Paul’s is definitely a ransom-ware attack. We don’t know that yet.Who are these attackers?Typically, for hackers, this is merely a business transaction. As I understand it, publicly there’s been no request for ransom. Years ago, it would be a team of hackers doing constant surveillance to prepare for an attack. It could take weeks. Now you can create a bot to do that that will map out your entire IT team using LinkedIn for a social engineering attack. But I have a lot of questions based on what’s not been said.How did these attackers get into city systems? Was this likely a phishing scheme, like “please enter your password to download my proposal”?It’s very possible. They’re using AI tools to create all this content that’s constantly being sent to you — emails, texts — that’s constantly evolving, constantly morphing, so it doesn’t look like it’s coming from a single source.What do the hackers want — money, data, chaos?Let’s look at the persona of a hacker these days. Typically, seven to eight times out of 10 this is merely a business transaction — a low level of effort these days for a huge rate of return. They spend five minutes on it and get $50,000 out of it. That’s why we’re seeing so much of it.Then you have the idealogues. Somebody wants to hurt you because they’re mad at you. A former employee, philosophical differences, political differences. From what we see out there, that’s incredibly rare.Then you have the third category, which is nation-state attacks, countries going after each other, typically for intelligence or intellectual property theft. In terms of my experience, if you’re calling in the cyber teams from the National Guard, if you’re calling in the FBI, is it fascination with the sophistication of the attack, or was it a bigger player? I think that’s an unanswered question we all have at this point.Were these attackers more likely domestic or international actors?Who knows? It’s all over the world. Typically all of these attacks are done with free, open source tools. It’s amazing what’s available and what’s done with a little bit of know-how. We don’t know if this was domestic. We don’t know if this was international. It’s difficult to trace. If it’s that business-size persona, they’re going to want to money, and then they’ll want to disappear. They’re not going to want to be known. They’re not going to be flamboyant. Same with the nation state attackers.Should the average resident of St. Paul be concerned that these attacks are becoming more and more common against the public sector and private sector alike?I view it as, we’re all going to have to be prepared to be annoyed a little bit. As this level of threat grows, especially in the AI side of it, the ease at which these tools can be created, using bots if you will, even for people who don’t know how to code, with a little bit of know-how, a little bit of imagination, they have the ability to do very disruptive things.So what should the average person do now?Button things up as best you can. The threats are coming, and they’re very real. Expect a disruption in services.And change your passwords?Always. Probably sooner rather than later, depending upon how fast quantum computing comes, will be the end of all passwords. We’ll move to biometrics — retinal scans, thumb prints, facial recognition. We’re already kind of getting there. If these kinds of attacks become very common, you’re going to see the rapid push from cyber security professionals to get away from passwords as much as possible and move to much more secure methods.What should city employees be doing right now — also changing their passwords?On this case, no doubt. It’s not uncommon in situations like these where it becomes a mandatory reset. All passwords will be changed. That’s one basic route to take, but there may be a greater response. A year and a half ago, the Change Healthcare hack , now a division of Optum Health, there was so much concern they actually discarded equipment. It’s not uncommon where they’ll just get rid of the hardware to make sure there’s no potential trace of the malware or virus.How long will it take for the city to say “all clear, things are back to normal”?It could be hours before they’re back up and running. The major concern is if your back-ups are corrupted. There’s been no indication of that. But if you’ve got malware or ransomware, and you also find it in your back-ups, that could roll into days. It could into weeks. I’m only speculating, because we don’t know that at this point yet.Why did the city wait so long to make this public?I can only speak in general in terms of my experience of dealing with these things in the past. That could potentially be a hint into the sophistication of the attack. This is speculative — they might not have known the extent of what they were dealing with it. You get into a mode, you start to think you’re successful, and then bam! You see it again. That is a challenge in the AI and coming quantum era. All of us are learning on the fly. This is so new. It’s such powerful stuff.You’ve said these attacks are getting more sophisticated. Is it safe to say AI is getting sneakier?AI allows us to spot vulnerabilities quicker. What would normally take a hacker six-eight months to write, code-wise, now takes them days instead of months. Microsoft, Open AI and Anthropic have all created sophisticated coding tools that allow us to create code faster than ever before. Microsoft’s GIT HUB Co-Pilot, a very common tool these days, is an AI development companion for programmers, Python developers, C developers. It’s very powerful. When used for good, it’s powerful stuff as we’re able to innovate faster than at any time in history. When used for bad, we can do bad things faster than ever before.Let’s talk about worst case scenarios. If you’re a resident or city employee and your information is hacked, what do you do now — just pull your credit report?There’s lots of different services these days. The challenge we’re going to have as individuals is monitor, monitor and monitor some more. Identity theft is easier than ever before with these advanced technologies. There’s apps out there like LifeLock, that’s a popular one that’s been advertised for years. It’s a monitoring service that alerts you if anyone is trying to open accounts or take out loans in your name. There’s tools out there that can help you monitor your digital life.We’ve seen some major security breaches in recent years, from large corporations to the Minneapolis Public Schools. Is there something that cities like St. Paul aren’t doing but should be doing better to protect their systems?I don’t know. I think everyone is trying to do those right things. The sheer number of attacks, we’re almost numb to it. The frequency is incredible. The bigger question for everyone, every city, every corporation: Can we keep pace with the level of things that are out there? We’ve all been in this reactive posture, if you will. Sadly, I do not see that declining. I only see it accelerating for the worst. We have the opportunity to catch up and combat these things, in real time, but it’s a difficult pace to maintain.