[skeeba]

A city in Florida has paid hackers almost $500,000 after suffering a ransomware attack that locked down its email systems and servers – only the latest municipality to be hit by ransomware and pay the ransom.

The Florida municipality, Lake City, has a population of 12,046 and is located in northern Florida. Lake City officials voted on Monday to pay the hackers 42 Bitcoin (which translates to 460,000 USD), which would be mostly covered by insurance.

Lake City marks the second Florida city this month to pay hackers their demanded ransom. The two Florida cities are only the latest in a string of ransomware attacks targeting state and local city governments – and experts warn that the cities paying the ransom could only show hackers that the attacks are profitable, incentivizing them to launch even more attacks against municipalities.

Link: https://threatpost.com/second-florida-ci...ck/146018/

[Vulva]

The worse shit always happens in florida lol

[Drako]

I'm almost glad I moved out of Florida. Only the craziest stuff happens there. But in a ransomware attack on a city, there's not much you can do. You're a lot more important than just a single computer, so you have to get things up and running again. You could always contact the FBI but I've never seen any success stories from them.

[Dismas]

42 Bitcoin. What a number.