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A Florida city's council voted to pay a ransom of $600,000 in Bitcoin to hackers that targeted its computer systems — and the payout is a sign of how unprepared much of the US is to deal with a coming wave of cyber attacks.
The city council of Riviera Beach, 50 miles north of Fort Lauderdale, voted on Monday to meet the demands of their hackers in the hope of getting back their compromised data, CBS News reported.
According to The Palm Beach Post, the attack began on May 29, when a employee from the police department opened an email attachment that contained malware. The software quickly spread through the city's computer systems, affecting its email system and even the 911 dispatch operations.
The New York Times reported that the hackers demanded their ransom in bitcoin. The paper noted that there is no guarantee that hackers will honor their end of the deal after getting the money. CBS reported that the council already voted to spend $1 million on new computers after the attack.
Also at CNN.
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(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday June 20 2019, @06:31PM
That was a bit of an odd thing to. It doesn't say that they are replacing all the computers, but we can assume it is. So from that they only value their own data to around, or less then, $400k? Probably less since they most likely also include salaries of the technicians and various consultant fees and such in that difference to. Not to bad for restoring a backup, or they did forgot to make those to? Don't they run some kind of attachment scanning on the email servers? So many questions.
From the article it appears that other cities extorted for a lot less refused to pay. So why would they agree to pay $600k? I can't really comprehend that at the moment.