Posted on 03/06/2017 2:11:04 PM PST by davikkm
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Pennsylvania’s top state Senate Democrat said Monday that no ransom has been paid to resolve a cyberattack that shut down the caucus’ network and prompted an FBI investigation. Senate Democrats’ computer network, including their email system, remained inaccessible Monday, three days after the “ransomware” attack was discovered by technology staff who received an alert that the network had been breached. Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, would not say what sort of ransom had been demanded, but he said none had been paid, and he and other Senate Democrats said they were not inclined to do so. “Right now we have no intention of dealing with the demand,” Costa said. A ransomware attack is typically aimed at stealing sensitive information in an attempt to be paid for the data’s return, often in a digital currency. For the time being, Costa said, Senate Democrats were focused on trying to restore access to the network, which contains a wide range of documents, from policy work to constituent case files.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Stop playing around with the Russians, Democrats!
That might explain why DU was down for a week after the election.
Hmmm
most likely from logging on to porn sites
Ransom ware attacks don’t generally steal the data, they encrypt it. You pay to get the decryption key.
“most likely from logging on to porn sites”
Since this was the Demondog party it probably had to do with too much pizza delivery.
The Democrats are going to stand on principle and not pay the ransom.After all it’s THEIR money this time.
Usually rasomware encrypts all of one’s data files and then vamooses. Unless you’ve backed up your data offline or you are running W7 pro and have activated and utilized its built-in system protection subsystem, allowed it plenty of space and know how to recover data using Previous Version, then you’re screwed. (BTW, the keys for some ransomware are known and available on the web, and some of the encryption algorithms for other ransomware are known and free tools are available that can figure out the encryption key based on one clear file and one encrypted file and then the key can be used on the rest of ones encrypted files.)
Be that as the above may be, one would think that professional organizations like the PA Dems SHOULD have competent IT staff to keep this kind of crap from happening. I’ve got clients with just a half-a-dozen employees that probably have WAY better protection from badware than the PA Dems.
Resist we much!
...which a large majority of the time does not work.
bump
Pizza porn. It's what demoncraps do.
Hmmm. Ransom ware TELLS you it has engaged. That’s kind of the point.
The ransom was probably that the Philly soda tax (doubled cost of soda—was effective January 1) be banned by the legislature.
It is really ticking off a lot of folks in that city.
Usually. As I understand, sometimes they will do both, and other things.
their email system is down because it was the door into their network, and they have no idea how widespread the attack was. the rest of their stuff is down because they don’t have backups.
the severity of the damage is directly related to how crappy their network policies are.
in the old days — like, last year — the decryption keys worked surprisingly often. back when there was honor among these guys.
if this is the variant that jumps across network shares (and it almost certainly is), you can’t trust that your network is clean until you’ve gone through an agonizing amount of grunt work.
then you have to take into consideration that they don’t attack one or two email addresses that they’ve harvested, they attack as many as they can, and each infected client could theoretically be encrypting away whatever network shares they have access to.
but, step one is to be sure you’re clean. not a simple process.
I knew that the Clinton Foundation was desperate, but to eat one’s own young?
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