A cybercrime organization has breached a system used by the Town of Normal to send out emergency and event notices to subscribers.
“Any people who have subscribed to Notify Normal or Code Red via a managed account, which means they created a password and used an email address, should go in, if they have reused that password with any other personal or business account, and change that password on those accounts immediately,” said town spokesperson Cathy Oloffson.
The town has about 2,300 subscribers to Code Red, operated by a firm called Crisis 24. The town started using the system in 2022 and has not yet used it for crisis communication.
“They were breached by an organized cyber-criminal group," said Oloffson. "They believe that the data that was compromised includes the data subscribers would put into the Code Red system — typically name, address, an email address, a phone number, and then their associated passwords.”
The platform is down at least until January said Oloffson, so she doesn’t have access to current data. In 2024, though, the town sent out about 116 messages. A majority were about road conditions or closures. Close to a third of the messages were about events; 7% were from the police department.
“We've learned from Code Red that we will be getting a new platform, and when we get the new platform up and running, we will send a message directly to all of those subscribers with information about how to create a new account or change a password,” said Oloffson.
Until then, she said the town will rely on the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System [IPAWS] run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] if there is a need to notify people about a true emergency. That system sends content to every cell phone within a geographic area, said Oloffson.
The city of East Peoria and other Illinois Valley entities have also been affected by the data breach.
Having once been breached, would the town continue trusting Crisis 24?
“We are having internal conversations about that,” said Oloffson. “The town is committed to keeping a communication mechanism like Notify Normal available so that we can share information via text.”
She said when the town chose Crisis 24 in 2022, there were several vendors available and since then other firms also have entered the marketplace.
When the town gets information from the vendor used for the system, she said Normal will share it as soon as possible.
