Katie Mulvaney reports:
An unknown person or group held a Providence law firm captive for months by encrypting its files and then demanding $25,000 in ransom paid in anonymous cyber currency to restore access, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.
Moses Afonso Ryan Ltd. is suing its insurer, Sentinel Insurance Co., for breach of contract and bad faith after it denied its claim for lost billings over the three-month period the documents were frozen last year by the so-called “ransomware” attack.
Read more on Providence Journal.
And remember how you were warned that paying ransom wasn’t necessarily any guarantee you’d get a real decryption key or your data unlocked? According to the complaint, after MAR made initial payment to the attackers, the attackers demanded additional payment. By the time this was over, MAR had spent more than 3 months and more than $25,000 to regain access to their files.
And yes, it all started when an attorney received an email from an unknown source that had an attachment – and the attorney opened it. It was in May, 2015.