- Jul 8, 2019

Another Hacked Florida City Pays $460,000 Ransom

About 3 weeks ago, hackers launched a cyber attack that disabled Lake City, Florida’s the computer and phone systems paralyzing staff with a ransomware attack. The staff of the small North Florida town worked with the F.B.I. and an outside security consultant to restore phone lines, email and online utility payments. But in the end, city leaders called an emergency meeting and reluctantly approved paying the hackers the ransom they demanded: 42 Bitcoin, or about $460,000.

It was the second city to agree to a large ransom in two weeks. Riviera Beach, in Florida’s Palm Beach County, signed off on an extraordinary $600,000 payment last week, also in Bitcoin, a cyber currency that is difficult to trace.

As in Riviera Beach, most of Lake City’s ransom will be paid by insurance. Only $10,000 will come out of the city’s bank account.

The F.B.I., as it typically does, recommended against agreeing to the hackers’ demands. But it was decided that a prolonged recovery would have cost taxpayers more. Though there was no guarantee that the attackers would release the city’s data, evidently after the ransom was paid, the IT staff had already been making strides in bringing systems back online. You can only imagine that this sort of reinforcement is exactly what fuels and inspires other would be criminals to attacking our critical infrastructure.

Now, you may have heard of what’s going on in Baltimore, a much larger city that has been fighting a massive ransomware attack for the past two months. They’ve spent over $18 million on recovery. In comparison, hackers there had demanded a ransom of $80,000. In hind sight, it might have cost less to just pay the criminals off.