Officials in Licking County tell 10TV that ransom was demanded for an IT hack that impacted the county’s phone and computer systems. A computer virus shut down more than a thousand computers inside the Licking county government center late Tuesday. A county commissioner says that the virus demanded a payment in Bitcoin for the county…
Category: Malware
UK: Tiverton town hall has two years’ worth of documents deleted by virus that demanded £3,000 ransom
Joseph Curtis reports: A town clerk mistakenly opened a virus loaded email and wiped out every council document in the system since 2015. John Vanderwolfe, of Tiverton Town Council in Devon, said it was ‘the worst thing that’s happened in his 12 years in the role’, and added the blunder ‘is a lesson to us…
Russian hackers behind attempted Polish foreign ministry hack: report
Radio Poland reports: A hacking attempt in December on the computer servers of the Polish Foreign Ministry was likely the work of Russian hackers, according to the Rzeczpospolita daily. The alleged hackers were part of the APT28 group, also known as the Fancy Bear cyber espionage group, which experts identify as being associated with the…
Austrian hotel pays ransomware demand to unlock guests’ rooms (Fake news?)
Update: I think we need to forget about this story’s claim of guests being locked in rooms, etc. This now appears to be fake news based on a report from a site that is not a reputable news site. I’m not sure about another site that carried the story of ransomware but without the bit about guests…
Ransomware makes California nursing school feel ill
Ryan Francis reports: About three months ago, an instructor at Gurnick Academy, a California-based nursing school, had his biggest fear come alive. When he tried to access his lectures, the files were encrypted. The teacher was literally locked out of his classroom. If it wasn’t for a quick acting IT department, the entire school might…
TX: Cockrell Hill police lose some evidence in ransomware attack
Jason Trahan reports that when the Cockrell Hill Police Department server was infected with ransomware after an employee clicked on a link in an email that appeared to be from the department, the department decided not to pay the $4,000 ransom demand. As a result, Trahan reports, the department lost some video evidence and a…