Recently there were two ransomware attacks that affected the systems and encrypted files belonging to Harrison County Courthouse and Florida city council, but the shocking part is that both the authorities have agreed to pay the ransom amount asked by the cyber criminals. Such actions clearly suggest how powerful these attacks are and what these hackers have become.
The Harrison County Courthouse, which was affected by ransomware attack agreed to pay the money as asked by the hackers. On Wednesday night, June 19, this issue was discussed during the commission meeting, when the officials stated that they paid the $1,500 ransom demanded.
But, the blackmail saga did not end after making the payment, as the officials received a message where the anonymous hackers asked again for $3,000 more.
WDTV reported that currently the Clarksburg Police Department (CPD) and the FBI are investigating the attack, which was reported on Thursday, June 20.
An early investigation revealed that the cybercriminals gained access to several servers and files, which were encrypted successfully. Later, the attackers asked for a ransom of $1,500. After the revelation of the attack, County Administrator William Parker said, "Even if you pay a ransom, you're not guaranteed you'll get your files back, or all the files."
In terms of the cyber-attack in Florida, the city council of Riviera Beach agreed to pay a ransom of $600,000 in Bitcoin to the cybercriminals who targeted its computer systems.
Reports also stated that attack took place on May 29 when an employee of the police department opened a malicious email. The malware quickly spread through the city's computer systems and affected the email systems, as well as 911 dispatched operations.
As reported by CBS news, on Monday, June 17 the city council voted to meet the demands of the hackers in the hope that they may get back their compromised data.
But how the city council tackled this threatening situation has shown that they were entirely unprepared to such attacks. The difference is between prepared and unprepared system maintenance in the wake of such attacks that should serve as a lesson to other government websites.
