Second Florida city makes large payment to ransomware crooks

Another city in Florida has had to dig deep and pay ransomware crooks half a million dollars after an infection ravaged their computer network, making it the second Florida city in as many weeks to do so.

Florida has not been having a good time with ransomware recently. The sunshine state has been somewhat gloomy when it comes to malware, as two of its cities have paid a combined total of $1.1 million to crooks after two separate ransomware infections forced city officials to pay up.

Last week we reported on the $600,000 that Riviera Beach were planning on coughing up. A week late and it’s the turn of Lake City.

Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts important files, leaving them inaccessible until the owner pays for a decryption key.

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According to local reports, the city network had been down for two weeks before IT staff contacted the crooks via their insurer to make a payment. The insurance company – like with Riviera Beach – covered the majority of the payment, but Lake City tax payers still have to bear the brunt of $10,000.

IT staff had disconnected impacted devices within minutes of detecting the attack, but it appears to have been too late as the infection encrypted important system files, and prevented city workers from sending emails as well as prevented residents from making online payments.

Again, this is another infection that is almost certainly down to poor IT security hygiene. Why were important system files not backed up? How did a ransomware infection get onto the city network in the first place? These are but some of the questions that IT staff will need to face in the aftermath of such an attack.

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It appears to be yet another demonstration that ransomware crooks are going to continue to keep on with this lucrative work until IT staff start educating employees about common ransomware infection techniques and use effective backup solutions so if a network does get infected, they can remove the infection and restore the network to working order.

Until then, if businesses and city councils are going to continue to hand over large amounts of money to crooks, this isn’t a problem that is going to improve any time soon. In fact, it’s more likely to get worse.