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 ...
Apples and oranges. Leaked NSA tool from wikipedia: "EternalBlue exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft's implementation of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. This vulnerability is denoted by entry CVE-2017-0144[9][10] in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) catalog. The vulnerability exists because the SMB version 1 (SMBv1) server in various versions of Microsoft Windows mishandles specially crafted packets from remote attackers, allowing them to execute arbitrary code on the target computer.[11]"
An employee opening an attachment, or an employee downloading malware from a hacked website, or an employee picking up a thunb lying on the ground, or an employee downloading an "app" from a fake app store, or the cleaning crew inserting malware, or a dozen similar scenarios, has nothing to do with the NSA hacking tools which use remote exploitation.
They are both problematic and can have similar consequences. But with the former you are attacked. With the latter it is happenstance enabled by stupid employees.
Actually, times ten.
Agreed. Can the city start subpoenaing employee's bank statements?
Don’t they have backups????
This.
$650k buys a bit of kit...
“These ransoms should never be paid. All it is doing is incentivizing and financing the next round of piracy”
That’s right. Baltimore, for all its faults, and there are many faults, at least hasn’t paid the ransom ware demand levied against the city after a May 7 attack. Services are still down (although email service has been restored and 911 works). It’s a pain to pay bills or tickets and buy or sell a house but I’d rather all of it than bow to crime.
Apparently the ones that hit this small town were more ambitious. Baltimore’s ransom was only $74,000.
To set the stage,
Riviera Beach is a predominately black neighborhood cept beachside where rich white folk live and pay most of the cities taxes
Mayors, city council members, police officers of all levels have been put in prison due to corruption.
Now if you care to score some dope or get stabbed in a local bar, this may just be your kind of place.
I would certainly be on the lookout for any employee who buys a new car in the days following the ransom payment.
Just think how much money they saved by not hiring a competent IT person or two...
I’ve never understood it either. Seems like there should be two internets barely connected together just enough when and where needed to facilitate certain things but with firewalls and other security measures in place. Completely separate servers and traffic routing otherwise.
The real scary part is that .mil, .gov, the electric grid, water supply systems, power plants, including nuclear are all on the same web as we are right now.
We’re screwed
I would be thinking more along the lines of a gambling “hobby.”
The External Blue Exploit is just what we were told, you to think the NSA has many other hacking tools besides that one.
Plus a direct attack from someone actively penetrating the network remotely or sending malware via email is not different in my mind they are both attacks......
True a stupid employee opened the attachment but it’s still an attack which cost the city approximately $600,000
Besides in a DDOS attack hundreds if not thousands of computers become infected with malware that can all be remotely activated in a coordinated attack.
I would imagine most of those were via email attachments, which then when activate all attack another computer target acting as Bots.....
So regardless of how it happens it is still an attack.
Easier said than done.....
What happens if the backups are infected, reloading them will do nothing..but reinstall the malware, I’m sure that was thought of but couldn’t be done.
As far as initializing the hard drive and restoring or replacing the hard drives with new ones and rebuilding the servers.....
If the backups are bad that does you no good.
Plus, I’m sure the City has software installed besides basic Microsoft Office type products and may not be easily reinstalled....voter registration databases, police/fire dispatching systems, etc.....
Some have suggested hiring 1 or 2 competent IT people, again that’s easier said than done, an experienced and up to date IT person who could help mitigate such attacks aren’t cheap and would likely not come to work for the City unless the price was north of $150,000/year or more......
In the recent past I was a Senior Consultant for a decent sized, nationwide IT consulting company....the going rate the company charged for me to show up on site was $225/hour plus travel expenses....and that wasn’t the highest rate some of our people were billed to the customer for.....
What I have seen is the more experienced, Senior, experienced IT people are working for larger consulting companies making well into the 6-figures and would be bored stiff going to a 9-5 job for a small city....
Going forward, IMO, the best this city can do is hire a consulting company to come in, put in place a solid Cyber Security Plan and hope that employees follow the plan
In the end, even the best plans are meaningless if one person doesn’t follow the plan....I’ve worked for some well known fortune 100 companies with worldwide networks and I’ve seen senior engineers do stupid things and take down parts of key systems, we had a guy open an attachment which nearly cost him his job, he was on probation and had to undergo all types of remedial training to stay employed....
Albany, NY was hacked, but MUM on their payment. Even though it’s public money, Dems hide stuff.
What a bunch of idiots. They should have spent some of the $600k on hiring competent IT staff instead.
No, they’re not.
Baltimore, oh Baltimore...
Baltimore Officials Estimate Damage From Ransomware Attack At Over $18 Million, Likely to Rise
https://gizmodo.com/baltimore-city-officials-estimate-fallout-from-ransomwa-1835286970
“””Riviera Beach is a predominately black neighborhood cept beachside where rich white folk live””
Yep, the times I have driven through RB to the beach, I always roll up my windows and lock the doors.
Exactly, as you cross Obama Blvd to the bridge, you enter Singer Island, Palm Beach North. Most locals come in from the North side, up where Jack Nicklaus lives.
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