Second Florida City Hit by Ransomware Opts to Pay

By Kacy Zurkus for Infosecurity Magazine
Wednesday, June 26, 2019

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Another Florida city has decided to pay a ransom to the hackers who took control over its municipal computer systems. On June 25, the mayor of Lake City said the northern Florida city would pay hackers $460,000 to regain control of its email and other servers that were seized two weeks ago, according to CBS 47 Action News Jax.

If paying the ransom becomes a trend, it would likely spur more targeted, well-planned attacks on cities or other defenseless victims, said Ilia Kolochenko, founder and CEO ImmuniWeb.

“With such lucrative and easy stakes on the table, cyber-criminals will now willingly invest to prepare sophisticated, hardly detectable and well-targeted campaigns. Worse, such cybercrimes are often not able to be investigated due to technical issues and payments in cryptocurrency. It’s a paradise for black hats.” Read Full Article