Posted on 06/21/2019 1:56:41 AM PDT by Libloather
A small city in Florida has agreed to pay nearly $600,000 in bitcoin ransom to hackers who took control of its computer systems in a ransomware attack, according to reports.
The Riviera Beach City Council on Monday unanimously approved its insurance carrier to pay 65 bitcoin — valued at about $592,000 — in hopes of regaining full access to its network, the Palm Beach Post reported.
The attack two weeks ago wiped out the city’s entire computer system. The city council was left without email and phone service, direct-deposit paychecks had to be hand-delivered instead and the police department had to change over to paper tickets for traffic citations.
The police and fire departments also had to write down 911 calls, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. They receive about 280 calls a day.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
l8r
Let’s see, they pay the $65K and then nothing happens...
Why have that stuff connected to the internet? Don’t these people know about VPNs and firewalls?
So their employees can talk with each other and use the same applications? Just a guess.
And so clients can pay their water bills on line. And so clients can renew their car tags on line. So clients can pay their parking violation tickets on line. You know. Just stuff like that.
How much y’wann’a bet the thing STARTED by an employee surfing porn .....
Someone got in and now it is gonna cost to unlock it.
$600k and nothing happens.
More likely started by an insider who is now getting paid in bitcoin.
These ransoms should never be paid. All it is doing is incentivizing and financing the next round of piracy.
That’s what an intranet is for.
same thing
How much did they pay Hillary Clinton for her cybersecurity lecture?
I think most people would be shocked to find out how easy this kind of attack is to pull off.
The NSA in the recent past had a major security breach when their most sensitive computer hacking tools were released to the internet along with their source code.
I am 100% certain these tools quickly made their way around the Dark Web and have been used and enhanced since their release.
In this article, it was an employee who opened an attachment in an infected email that caused the outbreak.
The problem is VPNs, Firewalls, etc...won’t help is people are careless which is what happened this time.
That’s why of all the SHTF situations I’m most afraid of Cyber Attacks, a relatively few people armed with nothing more than a laptop can cause massive damage.
In this case, the cost of protection is much higher than most municipal governments can afford compared to the attacker who only needs a laptop and internet connection.
Bump
Not bloody long!
Guess they don’t have backup. Very ignorant. The mayor sounds like a total fool in quotes in the article.
At some point we are all going back to paper. The cost of using computers due to oppression and crime will become prohibitive.
City tax dollars at work!
So computers were supposed to make our lives better?
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