Florida city to pay $600K ransom to hacker who seized computer systems weeks ago

[Demovictory9]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/20/us/riviera-beach-to-pay-hacker/index.html


(CNN)A Florida city is paying $600,000 in Bitcoins to a hacker who took over local government computers after an employee clicked on a malicious email link three weeks ago.

Riviera Beach officials voted this week to pay 65 Bitcoins to the hacker who seized the city's computer systems, forcing the local police and fire departments to write down the hundreds of daily 911 calls on paper, CNN affiliate WPEC reported.
The 65 Bitcoins, which equals $600,000, will come from the city's insurance, officials said.
Once the payment is made, they hope to get access to data encrypted by the hacker. Even with the plans to pay the ransom, the city said, an investigation is under way.

[Dennis Donovan]

1. This has been happening more frequently

In 2017, Erie County Medical Center's Epic computer system was brought down by a ransomware attack; it cost them $10mil to fix it.

Network and software security isn't prioritized nearly enough. I'm a software engineer for an EMR vendor with a cloud solution, and our network is locked down like Fort Knox.

[jmowreader]

2. Lesson learned: BACK YOUR SHIT UP!

You realize that if you had a clean backup of all your systems you could have formatted all your hard drives, zeroized your parameter RAM, restored from load tape and been back up in a few hours.

[NightWatcher]

3. Can we hire this hacker to help throw the election for Dems?

Apparently nothing is illegal anymore, so why play by the old rules.

[sarabelle]

4. If Florida city pays, can Baltimore be far behind?

She thing happened in B-more. In our economy across the nation, when this happens in cities, mostly the poor are hurt because the cities are denied revenue that is used to support communities.

[FM123]

5. Just wow.

"forcing the local police and fire departments to write down the hundreds of daily 911 calls on paper"