{"id":27619,"date":"2019-07-02T13:57:49","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T13:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/packetstormsecurity.com\/news\/view\/30278\/Florida-Employee-Fired-After-Paying-460-000-Bitcoin-Ransom.html"},"modified":"2019-07-02T13:57:49","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T13:57:49","slug":"florida-employee-fired-after-paying-460000-bitcoin-ransom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/florida-employee-fired-after-paying-460000-bitcoin-ransom\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Employee Fired After Paying $460,000 Bitcoin Ransom"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"img-wrapper lazy-image\">\n<div class=\"img-permalink-sub-wrapper\"><span class=\"js_lightbox-wrapper lightbox-wrapper\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.kinja-img.com\/gawker-media\/image\/upload\/s--ii49iajX--\/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800\/pb4lcrr5o8ary0tjzsf5.jpg\" class=\"lazyload ls-lazy-image-tag\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i.kinja-img.com\/gawker-media\/image\/upload\/s--ii49iajX--\/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800\/pb4lcrr5o8ary0tjzsf5.jpg 2x, https:\/\/i.kinja-img.com\/gawker-media\/image\/upload\/s--ii49iajX--\/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800\/pb4lcrr5o8ary0tjzsf5.jpg 3x\" data-width=\"2750\" data-chomp-id=\"pb4lcrr5o8ary0tjzsf5\" data-format=\"jpg\" alt=\"Illustration for article titled Florida City Fires IT Employee After Paying $460,000 Bitcoin Ransom to Hackers\"><\/span><\/div>\n<p>Photo: Wilfredo Lee (AP)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Lake City, Florida paid out a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/27\/us\/lake-city-florida-ransom-cyberattack.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" onclick=\"window.ga('send', 'event', 'Embedded Url', 'External link', 'https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/27\/us\/lake-city-florida-ransom-cyberattack.html', {metric25:1})\">bitcoin ransom worth $460,000<\/a> to hackers who disabled the city\u2019s computer systems with sophisticated ransomware last month, hot on the heels of a <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/florida-city-votes-to-pay-off-criminals-holding-compute-1835692351\" rel=\"nofollow\" onclick=\"window.ga('send', 'event', 'Embedded Url', 'Internal link', 'https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/florida-city-votes-to-pay-off-criminals-holding-compute-1835692351', {metric25:1})\">$600,000 ransom<\/a> paid out in similar circumstances by Riviera Beach, Florida just weeks later. Now, as flagged from local media reports <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/florida-city-fires-it-employee-after-paying-ransom-demand-last-week\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" onclick=\"window.ga('send', 'event', 'Embedded Url', 'External link', 'https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/florida-city-fires-it-employee-after-paying-ransom-demand-last-week\/', {metric25:1})\">by ZDnet on Monday<\/a>, the city has fired its director of information technology.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wcjb.com\/content\/news\/City-of-Lake-City-moves-Forward-after-Cyber-Attack-511802711.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" onclick=\"window.ga('send', 'event', 'Embedded Url', 'External link', 'https:\/\/www.wcjb.com\/content\/news\/City-of-Lake-City-moves-Forward-after-Cyber-Attack-511802711.html', {metric25:1})\">According to WCJB<\/a>, city manager \u201cJoe Helfenberg confirmed that the director of information technology, Brian Hawkins, was fired\u201d as a result of the attack, which hit servers, email networks, and phone lines. Helfenberg \u201cestimates that the city should make a full recovery from the attack in about two weeks,\u201d WCJB wrote.<\/p>\n<div id=\"swappable-mobile-ad-container\" class=\"js_ad-mobile-dynamic swappable-mobile-ad-container js_ad-dynamic ad-mobile-dynamic movable-ad\">\n<div class=\"ad-unit ad-mobile\">\n<div class=\"ad-mobile-inner\">\n<p class=\"ad-label proxima\"><small class=\"proxima\">Advertisement<\/small><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Lake City officials described the incident as a \u201ctriple threat,\u201d according to ZDnet, and it has since been determined that an employee downloaded an infected document they had received via email. That set off a chain of events involving three separate malware variants sometimes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cybereason.com\/blog\/triple-threat-emotet-deploys-trickbot-to-steal-data-spread-ryuk-ransomware\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" onclick=\"window.ga('send', 'event', 'Embedded Url', 'External link', 'https:\/\/www.cybereason.com\/blog\/triple-threat-emotet-deploys-trickbot-to-steal-data-spread-ryuk-ransomware', {metric25:1})\">used in concert<\/a> in cyber attacks. The initial document carried the Emotet trojan, which installed itself and subsequently downloaded another trojan called TrickBot and the Ryuk ransomware. Ryuk then spread throughout city systems, locking them down and demanding a ransom. Only the police and fire department systems were spared as they were on a different server, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/27\/us\/lake-city-florida-ransom-cyberattack.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" onclick=\"window.ga('send', 'event', 'Embedded Url', 'External link', 'https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/27\/us\/lake-city-florida-ransom-cyberattack.html', {metric25:1})\">according to the New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Times reported that after several days of working with the FBI and security consultants to resolve the issue, city officials reluctantly determined that it would be cheaper and more effective to simply pay off the hackers. (Security firm Emsisoft estimates that experts have only \u201csuccessfully unscrambled Ryuk ransomware in 3 to 5 percent of cases,\u201d the paper wrote.) Insurance covered all but $10,000 of the ransom.<\/p>\n<div class=\"js_ad-mobile-dynamic js_ad-dynamic ad-mobile-dynamic movable-ad\">\n<div class=\"ad-unit ad-mobile\">\n<div class=\"ad-mobile-inner\">\n<p class=\"ad-label proxima\"><small class=\"proxima\">Advertisement<\/small><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The city deemed the employee in question to have left city networks vulnerable to attack, but he was not the individual who downloaded the malicious attachment, the Times added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur city manager did make a decision to terminate one employee, and he is revamping out whole IT department to comply with what we need to be able to overcome what happened this last week or so and that\u2019s so it doesn\u2019t happen again,\u201d Lake City Mayor Stephen Witt said, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wcjb.com\/content\/news\/City-of-Lake-City-moves-Forward-after-Cyber-Attack-511802711.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" onclick=\"window.ga('send', 'event', 'Embedded Url', 'External link', 'https:\/\/www.wcjb.com\/content\/news\/City-of-Lake-City-moves-Forward-after-Cyber-Attack-511802711.html', {metric25:1})\">according to WCJB<\/a>. He added that the decryption key provided by the hackers appears to be working.<\/p>\n<div class=\"js_ad-mobile-dynamic js_ad-dynamic ad-mobile-dynamic movable-ad\">\n<div class=\"ad-unit ad-mobile\">\n<div class=\"ad-mobile-inner\">\n<p class=\"ad-label proxima\"><small class=\"proxima\">Advertisement<\/small><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Paying the hackers is controversial because it almost certainly encourages further attacks, whether or not officials believe they have little choice in the matter. Sometimes, as occurred to a similarly afflicted Kansas hospital in 2016 that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.healthcareitnews.com\/news\/kansas-hospital-hit-ransomware-pays-then-attackers-demand-second-ransom\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" onclick=\"window.ga('send', 'event', 'Embedded Url', 'External link', 'https:\/\/www.healthcareitnews.com\/news\/kansas-hospital-hit-ransomware-pays-then-attackers-demand-second-ransom', {metric25:1})\">chose to pay the ransom<\/a>, the hackers will simply attempt to extort more payments from the target.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFirst of all, that money is then used to proliferate this activity,\u201d FBI cyber crimes supervisory special agent Joel DeCapua <a href=\"https:\/\/www.symantec.com\/blogs\/feature-stories\/when-it-comes-ransomware-demands-just-say-no\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" onclick=\"window.ga('send', 'event', 'Embedded Url', 'External link', 'https:\/\/www.symantec.com\/blogs\/feature-stories\/when-it-comes-ransomware-demands-just-say-no', {metric25:1})\">told security firm Symantec<\/a> last year. \u201cYou\u2019re paying these bad actors to target other people. Second, organizations that pay a ransom think their problems are over. But a lot of times there\u2019s a lot of nasty malware left on their systems that they don\u2019t know about. You can pay, but there\u2019s still malware on there, re-infecting the system or stealing information.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"js_ad-mobile-dynamic js_ad-dynamic ad-mobile-dynamic movable-ad\">\n<div class=\"ad-unit ad-mobile\">\n<div class=\"ad-mobile-inner\">\n<p class=\"ad-label proxima\"><small class=\"proxima\">Advertisement<\/small><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Ransomware attacks on municipal systems have recently made big headlines, with estimates of such incidents in the U.S. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2019\/05\/10\/politics\/ransomware-attacks-us-cities\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" onclick=\"window.ga('send', 'event', 'Embedded Url', 'External link', 'https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2019\/05\/10\/politics\/ransomware-attacks-us-cities\/index.html', {metric25:1})\">running into the hundreds<\/a>. In early June, Baltimore officials recently estimated the cost of an attack using the RobbinHood ransomware that hit around 10,000 city computers <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/baltimore-city-officials-estimate-fallout-from-ransomwa-1835286970\" rel=\"nofollow\" onclick=\"window.ga('send', 'event', 'Embedded Url', 'Internal link', 'https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/baltimore-city-officials-estimate-fallout-from-ransomwa-1835286970', {metric25:1})\">at $18 million and counting<\/a>. (They declined to pay the ransom.) Officials with Georgia\u2019s Judicial Council and Administrative Office of the Courts confirmed their systems had been contaminated with ransomware on Monday in what Ars Technica reported <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/information-technology\/2019\/07\/ryuk-ryuk-ryuk-georgias-courts-hit-by-ransomware\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" onclick=\"window.ga('send', 'event', 'Embedded Url', 'External link', 'https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/information-technology\/2019\/07\/ryuk-ryuk-ryuk-georgias-courts-hit-by-ransomware\/', {metric25:1})\">appears to be another Ryuk attack<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/florida-city-fires-it-employee-after-paying-ransom-demand-last-week\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" onclick=\"window.ga('send', 'event', 'Embedded Url', 'External link', 'https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/florida-city-fires-it-employee-after-paying-ransom-demand-last-week\/', {metric25:1})\">ZDnet<\/a>]<\/p>\n<div class=\"js_ad-mobile-dynamic js_ad-dynamic ad-mobile-dynamic movable-ad\">\n<div class=\"ad-unit ad-mobile\">\n<div class=\"ad-mobile-inner\">\n<p class=\"ad-label proxima\"><small class=\"proxima\">Advertisement<\/small><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>READ MORE <a href=\"https:\/\/packetstormsecurity.com\/news\/view\/30278\/Florida-Employee-Fired-After-Paying-460-000-Bitcoin-Ransom.html\">HERE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>READ MORE HERE&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27620,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[277],"tags":[6945],"class_list":["post-27619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity-blogs","tag-headlinehackergovernmentmalwareusadata-losscryptography"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the 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