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posted by martyb on Thursday June 20 2019, @05:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the sign-of-things-to-come dept.

A Florida city paid a $600k Bitcoin ransom to hackers who took over its computers — and it's a massive alarm bell for the rest of the US

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.

Related: In Baltimore And Beyond, A Stolen NSA Tool Wreaks Havoc


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday June 20 2019, @07:29PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 20 2019, @07:29PM (#858155) Journal

    I wonder how much security $600 K might have bought?

    You can buy a pretty sweet corporate anti malware system for that.

    A real network with controlled border ingress / egress points.

    Maybe even a REAL operating system for their PCs.

    And backups. You can buy a multi terabyte pocket drive for $100. That's a cheap disorganized way of making backups. But its more gooder than nothin'. For $600 K you could possibly have automated offsite backups.

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @11:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @11:47PM (#858303)

    I wonder how much security $600 K might have bought?

    This is classic results-oriented thinking on a individual level. The calculation isn't spend $600k for safety vs being extorted; it's $600k*(1/probability of being targeted) vs being extorted.

    Put another way, there are about 35,000 cities in the US (quick reference [reference.com]). So the suggestion being implied is to spend $600k*35,000 = 21,000,000K = $21 billion in taxes. To put that in perspective, the annual budget for NOAA (an arbitrarily picked moderately important government agency) is about $4.5 billion. That may be a worthwhile investment, but do you think the average taxpayer wants to spend that as opposed to other priorities like new highways, teachers, fire departments, weather forecasts, military, or whatever else?

    Put yet another way, "if only I had bought lottery number 5-6-16-20-32 last night, I could have been rich. Why did I bother saving that $5?"