Baltimore says it will not pay ransom after cyberattack

MSN News ^

[detective]

The US city of Baltimore, a victim this month of a cyberattack that paralyzed part of its computer network, will not pay a ransom to undo the damage, Mayor Bernard Young said Tuesday.

Hackers reportedly had demanded $100,000 in bitcoin, but Young told a news conference "I'm not considering" paying it.

[detective]

Cyber crime is being added to violent street crime and political crime as part of the experience in the City of Baltimore.

Since the attack was discovered on May 7, the mayor's IT team has worked to restore the network with the help of state, federal and private sector experts, Young said.

"We're making progress on some of the programming piece. We are not there yet," he said, adding he could not say how long it would take.

Microsoft provided its clients with a patch for "EternalBlue" in 2017.

"Going two years without a patch is gross malfeasance that's hard to lay at the NSA's feet," Graham said in a blog post.

[proust]

This could destroy Baltimore! /s

[dp0622]

That’s not nice :)

[Opinionated Blowhard]

What cyber-terrorist is stupid enough to think that Baltimore has any money to give them?

[dljordan]

Two freaking years without applying the patch? Who was running the IT department?

[HangnJudge]

...This could destroy Baltimore! /s

It's dead already

[Leaning Right]

They should send the hackers $100,000 worth of the former mayor's books. There's plenty of them laying around.

[DoodleBob]

We don't negotiate with terrorists.

[Sirius Lee]

Is that....is that Jar Jar Binks?

[Track9]

I wonder if this was a way for corrupt Baltimore to purge their computers of incriminating files.

[cnsmom]

How is this effecting the Hospitals and universities?

[Ingtar]

Much/most of the time paying doesn’t work anyway. Either the code is bad and won’t decrypt or the actors are bad and never intend it to decrypt.

[Ingtar]

Bathroom Servers Incorporated.

[thoughtomator]

Personally, I’d suspect their crazy ex-mayor as the principal behind the cyber-ransom attack. She needed to replace her book income somehow.

[VanShuyten]

If she’s got the hackers IDed, all she has to do is circulate the rumor on the street that the hackers keep all their profits in cash and gold and meth...

[Henry Cavendish]

If city council wants it, they’ll find the money for it.

[sparklite2]

They should take a page
from Homeland.  Send
Carrie Mathison to show
the guy her boobs,
threaten to kill him,
and get the release code.

[SkyDancer]

So their IT techs haven’t a backup program?

[georgiarat]

Democrat crony contractors.

[DUMBGRUNT]

https://www.baltimorebrew.com/2019/05/21/baltimores-out-of-date-and-underfunded-it-system-was-ripe-for-a-ransomware-attack/

But once the attackers were into Baltimore’s network, they knew what they were dealing with – a dangerously ill-prepared, kludged-together municipal IT system.

...“Things that have not been fixed, things that have not been changed, things that expired long ago, things that have been patched haphazardly,”

...“There are things I’ve looked at across the city’s systems that look like they were summer projects by interns,”

...The city’s IT is a mishmash of services running on old operating systems or using unsupported software or using new software that is not well understood across city agencies.

...This is a piece of ransomware that is built to be spread by someone with administrative access to the network. So it means that somebody had to get into probably one of Baltimore city servers.

...For Internet criminals, this chaotic landscape was full of opportunities.

.... Look at the Baltimore Police Department. They use Lotus Notes, which IBM stopped supporting almost a decade ago.