Licking County, Ohio, population 116,000, which bills itself as the 17th largest county in the state has been thrust back into the dark ages. A ransomware attack has taken down all of the county’s computers, including 911 dispatch and, they are saying, it will be a while before things are back to normal. On Tuesday […]
Continue reading → [DISPLAY_ACURAX_ICONS]The hotel Romantik Seehotel Jaegerwirt, a 4 star hotel in the Austrian Alps, decided to pay a ransom of 1,500 Euros in bitcoin after hackers broke into the hotel’s systems and locked all the guests out of their rooms. Kind of a downside of the Internet of Things. If you can unlock your hotel room […]
Continue reading → [DISPLAY_ACURAX_ICONS]The St. Louis Public Library system was hit with a ransomware attack last week. All 17 branches; around 700 systems. The attackers asked for $35,000 to decrypt the 700 computers that were infected – translating to around $50 a computer. However the library told them to pound sand – or something like that, possibly, something […]
Continue reading → [DISPLAY_ACURAX_ICONS]A small New England retailer learned about ransomware the hard way. After an employee clicked on a link, that system was infected with Cryptowall. The malware encrypted, among other files, the company’s accounting software. The accounting software did not live on that user’s computer; it lived on the network, but since that user had access […]
Continue reading → [DISPLAY_ACURAX_ICONS]Trend Micro surveyed 300 UK businesses and found some interesting information. Likely if they surveyed US businesses, the results would be similar. 44 percent of the businesses have been infected with ransomware. That is almost half. It doesn’t say how big the attack was, but given the FBI is saying that they are getting 4,000 […]
Continue reading → [DISPLAY_ACURAX_ICONS]A thousand-fold increase in crypto malware (AKA ransomware) is a pretty impressive number. The reason is that it is like taking candy from a baby – not very hard. Rather than having to figure out how to break into a computer, then figure out where the juicy data is, next getting it back to you without […]
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