A city in North Bend, had been hit with a ransomware attack quite recently. It worked in a manner to lock out a number of workers in the city from their databases and computers.
The City Administrator at North Bend City – Terence O’ Connor said that all servers and computers in the vicinity had gotten locked up in the morning of the incident. No one knew what happened until they received a note which said that it will cost them $50,000 for ransomware removal and it should be paid out in Bitcoin. When this has been done, then ransomware removal can be done by companies and individuals with the help of a simple code.
Fortunately enough, the IT systems in the city were backed up and most of the company officials were able to luckily avoid paying the ransom to the criminals responsible. These officials had, however, unanimously contacted the FBI to investigate the case. The FBI was then able to find ties of the ransomware removal note to Romania but the group of perpetrators could not be identified as yet.
Aside from the investigation, IT experts were able to identify the fact that this particular ransomware was quite advanced. It required two keys in order to be unlocked and one was actually planted in the system, while the original was with the criminals.
The city, however, was not affected as was expected and were extensively insured for such unprecedented scenarios. At the end of it all, they had to pay $5000 out of their pockets as well as ransomware removal firewalls which will prevent further attacks. Could have been worse, right?
