Nathan Bomey reports:
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan told the 2014 North American International Cyber Summit in Detroit crowd Monday that cyberattackers recently seized control of an immaterial city database and sought hundreds of thousands of dollars in a digital currency called bitcoin. The attack went nowhere, but Duggan said it was an example of the threats the city faces.
During the city’s Chapter 9 bankruptcy, which is weeks away from ending, one of the high-profile people involved in the case was the subject of a cyber attack that he believed was political, Duggan said. The attacker transferred a significant amount of money out of the official’s checking account, said Duggan
Detroit Emergency Mayor Kevyn Orr spokesman Bill Nowling said it was an attempted identity theft in spring 2013 but he declined to identify the target because the investigation is ongoing.
Read more on Detroit Free Press.
It’s not clear whether there’s any connection between the first incident reported above and another breach disclosed in March of this year where files were locked. In that earlier breach, the city did not mention whether they had received any ransom demand to unlock the files.
Update: RT reports that the hackers ought approximately $800,000 to provide the decryption key for the April hack, but that it wasn’t paid.