Massachusetts City Tells Ransomware Scumbags: Our IT Staff Will Handle This Easily
"exec" writes:
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The City of New Bedford, in Massachusetts, has found a way to deal with ransomware without paying: shoring up defenses, restoring from backups, and rebuilding systems.
The attack on the American city's systems was identified on July 5, after employees noticed unusual network activity upon returning from the July 4th holiday, Mayor Jon Mitchell explained in a press conference on Wednesday.
"We haven't seen any interruption in municipal services at all," said Mitchell.
The city's Management Information Systems (MIS) staff identified the presence of the file-scrambling RYUK nasty, a sophisticated form of ransomware, and through prompt action managed to limit its impact.
Supposedly named for a character in the manga series Death Note, RYUK can find and encrypt network drives, and delete volume snapshots to prevent the use of Windows System Restore in the absence of external backups.
[...] Mitchell attributes the relatively minor impact of the infection to luck, skill and the city's IT architecture.
The luck element has to do with the fact that the malware intrusion began over the July 4th holiday. Holidays and weekends are apparently a common time to launch ransomware attacks because IT staff tends to be scarce and less vigilant then; but in this case the holiday also ensured that many of the city's desktop PCs were powered down, which limited the ransomware's ability to spread.
The prompt action of the MIS staff on the morning of July 5th to defensively disconnect systems, according to Mitchell, helped reduce the impact of the infection.
-- submitted from IRC
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.